An Affordable Brain Controlled Wheelchair.

The objective of this project was to design a low-cost brain-controlled (EEG) wheelchair which will provide mobility to people who have experienced spinal cord injuries, were born unable to move, or have been permanently paralyzed

We obtained a low-cost wheelchair from The Free Wheelchair Mission, located in Irvine, California. In addition, we obtained an Emotiv Epoch, a low-cost EEG device designed for commercial purposes. The Emotiv Epoch captures EEG signals from 16 channels located in specific regions of the brain. In addition, the Emotiv Epoch can also capture EMG signals created by muscle contraction or expansion.

We adapted the wheelchair using motors connected to the wheels. In addition, we used and Arduino paired with a driver to control the motors. We used a laptop and machine learning algorithms to map EEG and EMG signals to movement commands. The total cost of the wheelchair was of $725.92.

If you want to look further into this project, you can check our poster.