Brain-computer interface adaptation for an end user to compete in the Cybathlon

Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCI) aim to assist severely motor impaired persons in their daily life routine, however only a few BCIs have made it out of the laboratory. To foster further development, the Cybathlon, an international multi-discipline tournament, has been founded. One of the disciplines is the BCI-Race, where end users control avatars in a virtual race game by their thoughts. The game supports 4 different commands which accelerate the avatar and increase the chance to win. So far, no gold standard procedure has been established on how to enable, train and individualize multi-class BCI control for users. In this work, we present a 4-stage procedure to closely tailor a multi-class BCI to an end user who will participate in the Cybathlon. In stage I, we test for basic BCI-capability, in stage II we evaluate the most suitable mental tasks for the user and in stage III, we test user compliance while perceiving feedback. Finally in stage IV, the user is playing the competition game. Our procedure provides a promising way to guide users from first contact with BCI technology to actually play a videogame by thoughts. We demonstrate the feasibility of our procedure at the pilot of the GRAZ-BCI racing team MIRAGE91. We believe that an evidence based procedure, maybe similar to the one presented in this work, is a necessity to introduce BCI technology in the daily life of potential end users.