Towards a Hybrid Control of a P300-based BCI for Communication in Severely Disabled End-users

A hybrid (electromyographic, EMG) control devoted to the correction of spelling errors was introduced in a previously implemented P300-based BCI system designed to control an assistive technology software (Riccio et al., 20111; Zickler et al., 2011). The hybrid version of such system would provide severly disabled end-users with a way to exploit not otherwise functionally reliable residual muscular activity. Six healthy subjects and one severly motor impaired end-user participated to the system testing. Preliminary findings are in favour of the superiority in efficiency of the hybrid control with respect to the no-hybrid (only BCI-based) as indicated by the observed improvement of the performance (expressed as time for selction and number of errors) that was associated with a decrease of the system usage frustration perceived by the users.