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OBJECTIVE: This paper presents an asyn-chronous electrooculography (EOG)-based human-machine interface (HMI) for smart home environmental control with the purpose of providing daily assistance for severe spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. METHODS: The proposed HMI allows users to interact with a smart home environment through eye blinking. Specifically, several buttons, each corresponding to a control command, randomly flash on a graphical user interface. Each flash of the buttons functions as a visual cue for the user to blink. To issue a control command, the user can blink synchronously with the flashes of the corresponding button. Through detecting blinks based on the recorded EOG signal, the target button and its corresponding control command are determined. Seven SCI patients participated in an online experiment, during which the patients were required to control a smart home environment including household electrical appliances, an intelligent wheelchair, as well as a nursing bed via the proposed HMI. RESULTS: The average false operation ratio in the control state was 4.1%, whereas during the idle state, no false operations occurred. CONCLUSION: All SCI patients were able to control the smart home environment using the proposed EOG-based HMI with satisfactory performance in terms of the false operation ratio in both the control and the idle states. SIGNIFICANCE: The proposed HMI offers a simple and effective approach for patients with severe SCIs to control a smart home environment. Therefore, it is promising to assist severe SCI patients in their daily lives.

Original publication

DOI

10.1109/TBME.2018.2834555

Type

Journal article

Journal

IEEE Trans Biomed Eng

Publication Date

01/2019

Volume

66

Pages

89 - 100

Keywords

Adult, Computer Communication Networks, Electrooculography, Female, Home Care Services, Humans, Male, Man-Machine Systems, Middle Aged, Quadriplegia, Self-Help Devices, Spinal Cord Injuries, User-Computer Interface