Combined Lateral and Longitudinal Control of EEG Signals-Based Brain-Controlled Vehicles

Using brain signals rather than limbs to control a vehicle may not only help persons with disabilities to acquire driving ability, but also provide healthy persons with a new alternative way to drive. In this paper, we propose a combined lateral and longitudinal control system for electroencephalogram (EEG) signals-based brain-controlled vehicles (BCVs). The proposed system is designed by integrating a user interface, a brain–computer interface (BCI), a control interface model, a lateral controller, and a longitudinal controller. We conduct driver-and-hardware-in-the-loop experiments under two control conditions (i.e., the brain- and manual-control conditions) with different subjects and three driving tests (i.e., the lane-changing, path-selection, and car-following tests). Experimental results show the feasibility of using brain signals to continuously perform both the lateral and longitudinal control of a vehicle. This study not only promotes the development of BCVs, but also provides some insights on how to apply BCIs in conjunction with assistant controllers to control other dynamic systems.