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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TBME.2017.2732479, IEEE
Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
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An EOG-Based Human-Machine Interface for
Wheelchair Control
Qiyun Huang, Shenghong He, Qihong Wang, Zhenghui Gu, Nengneng Peng, Kai Li, Yuandong Zhang, Ming
Shao, and Yuanqing Li*, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract— Objective: Non-manual human-machine interfaces
(HMIs) have been studied for wheelchair control with the aim of
helping severely paralyzed individuals regain some mobility. The
challenge is to rapidly, accurately and sufficiently produce control
commands, such as left and right turns, forward and backward
motions, acceleration, deceleration, and stopping. In this paper,
a novel electrooculogram (EOG)-based HMI is proposed for
wheelchair control. Methods: Thirteen flashing buttons, each
of which corresponds to a command, are presented in the
graphical user interface (GUI). These buttons flash on a one-
by-one manner in a pre-defined sequence. The user can select
a button by blinking in sync with its flashes. The algorithm
detects the eye blinks from a channel of vertical EOG data and
determines the user’s target button based on the synchronization
between the detected blinks and the button’s flashes. Results:
For healthy subjects/patients with spinal cord injuries (SCIs), the
proposed HMI achieved an average accuracy of 96.7%/91.7% and
a response time of 3.53 s/3.67 s with 0 false positive rates (FPRs).
Conclusion: Using one channel of vertical EOG signals associated
with eye blinks, the proposed HMI can accurately provide suffi-
cient commands with a satisfactory response time. Significance:
The proposed HMI provides a novel non-manual approach for
severely paralyzed individuals to control a wheelchair. Compared
with a newly established EOG-based HMI, the proposed HMI
can generate more commands with higher accuracy, lower FPR
and fewer electrodes.
Index Terms—human-machine interface (HMI), electrooculo-
gram (EOG), eye blink, wheelchair control.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A wheelchair can help paralyzed individuals regain mobility,
and human-machine interfaces (HMIs) can be used to translate
human intentions into wheelchair control commands. Most
conventional HMIs for wheelchair control, such as joysticks
and keyboards, are manual. However, these manual interfaces
become useless for severely paralyzed persons suffering from
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), spinal cord injury (SCI),
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China under Grant 61633010 and Grant 91420302, in part by the Na-
tional Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) under Grant
2015CB351703, and in part by Guangdong Natural Science Foundation under
Grant 2014A030312005.
*Y. Li (e-mail: auyqli@scut.edu.cn), Q. Huang, S. He, Z. Gu, N. Peng,
and K. Li are with the School of Automation Science and Engineering, South
China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China, and also with
Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Brain Computer Interface and Applications,
Guangzhou, 510640, China.
Q. Wang, Y. Zhang, and M. Shao are with the Affiliated Sichuan Provincial
Rehabilitation Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chengdu, 610036,
China.
Copyright (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted.
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1
or muscular dystrophy among other conditions. With modern
life-support technology, people severely paralyzed can lead
lives that are enjoyable and productive if they can be provided
with novel non-manual means of communication and control
[1].
A major task of designing a non-manual HMI for wheelchair
control is to rapidly, accurately, and sufficiently produce suf-
ficient commands, including left and right turns, forward and
backward motions, acceleration, deceleration, and stopping.
Since many severely paralyzed patients maintain normal func-
tions of their head and eyes, electroencephalogram (EEG) and
electrooculogram (EOG), resulting from brain activities and
eye movements, respectively, can be used in HMIs and have
attracted a great deal of attention over the past few decades.
Both EEG and EOG bear merits because they are noninvasive,
technically less demanding, and widely available at relatively
low cost [2].
EEG-based HMI is a type of brain computer interface (BCI),
which conveys the user’s intent by brain signals (such as
EEG) which do not depend on neuromuscular activity for
their generation [3]. Common EEG patterns used in BCIs
include event-related potentials (ERPs, e.g. P300 potential) [4],
[5], mu/beta rhythm related to motor imagery (MI) [6]–[8],
and steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) [9], [10].
Several BCIs, aimed at controlling the movement of a robotic
device, have been reported [11]–[17]. He et al. achieved real-
time control of a robotic quadcopter in a 3-D space based on
MI [17]. The subjects turned the quadcopter left or right by
imagining clenching left or right hand respectively. Imaging
both hands together caused the quadcopter to rise, while
intentionally imaging nothing caused it to fall. In [13], Long
and Li proposed a hybrid BCI incorporating MI and P300
in order to enrich control commands, in which MI was used
to implement left and right turns and deceleration, while the
acceleration was triggered by the user’s attention on a flashing
button on screen which elicited P300 potential. Furthermore,
Li designed a multimodal brain switch by combining P300 and
SSVEP for go/stop control of the wheelchair [14]. Combining
the works in [13] and [14], Li et al. presented a hybrid
wheelchair control system based on three widely used EEG
patterns: MI, P300 and SSVEP. To our knowledge, BCIs for
robotic device control typically implement the MI paradigm to
steer the device due to its fast-response performance. However,
the disadvantage of the MI paradigm is that the number of
commands is limited by the number of imaginative motions
that can be classified (typically 2 or 3). Incorporating MI with
other EEG patterns helps increase the number of commands,
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but it also leads to other problems, such as a relatively longer
response time and a higher user workload. Additionally, for
MI-based BCIs, a long training period is generally required
for most users.
EOG has also been used to design non-manual HMIs.
Typical eye movements include gaze, blink, wink, and frown
[18]–[21]. All of these movements can generate prominent
EOG with high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Thus, studies
have focused on realizing controls or communications through
EOG-based HMIs [18]–[23]. However, to the best of our
knowledge, only a few of these studies [21], [22] have
addressed the development of motion control of a robotic
device in real time, such as a robot [21] and a wheelchair
[22]. Barea et al. proposed an EOG-based HMI for wheelchair
control by detecting the user’s gaze direction (up, down,
right and left) [22]. The four gaze directions were directly
interpreted into four control commands (forward/accelerate,
backward/decelerate, left turn, and right turn). In [21], Ma
and Cichocki et al. proposed a hybrid HMI for robot control
that operated in two separate modes: the EEG mode and the
EOG mode. The EEG mode was used to select a pre-defined
complex movement, such as sitting down or dancing. In the
EOG mode, a multi-threshold algorithm was used to classify
seven types of eye movements (double blinks, triple blinks,
left wink, right wink, left gaze, right gaze and frown) as seven
commands (stop, forward motion, turn 90◦ left, turn 90◦ right,
head left, head right, and mode switch, respectively). All single
blinks were regarded as unintended blinks and were ignored.
The subjects were asked to use the proposed HMI to control
mobile robots to complete a series of pre-defined movements.
The system achieved an average EOG accuracy (number of
correctly detected commands/number of detected commands)
of 79.5%. Two main challenges still exist for EOG-based
HMIs: (i) it is challenging to rapidly and accurately discrim-
inate intended (voluntary) and unintended (involuntary) eye
movements, and (ii) the accuracy of discriminating different
types of eye movements, such as blinks and winks, needs to
be further improved.
To overcome the limitations of existing systems, this paper
proposes a novel EOG-based HMI for wheelchair control.
In our system, a graphical user interface (GUI) with several
flashing buttons is presented to the user. The buttons are
highlighted one by one in a pre-defined sequence. Each button
corresponds to a specific command, such as a left or right
turn; a total of 13 commands are provided. The user can
issue a command by selecting the corresponding button, and
this is accomplished through the user’s synchronized intended
blinks with the flashes. The algorithm detects the blinks from a
channel of vertical EOG signals and distinguishes the potential
target button from non-target ones. The final decision is made
by a decision making process.
Experiments for both healthy subjects and patients with
SCIs were conducted. First, all of the subjects participated in
a Synchronous Experiment in which they tested the proposed
HMI without a wheelchair. Indicators, such as the accuracy,
the response time, the false positive rate, and the information
transfer rate were calculated. Next, the subjects drove a
wheelchair using the proposed HMI to complete different tasks
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2
(Asynchronous Experiments). The results demonstrated that
the proposed HMI based on only one type of eye movement
(blink) and one EOG channel could rapidly, accurately and
sufficiently produce commands for wheelchair control.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section
II presents the methodologies, including data acquisition, the
GUI mechanism, and the algorithm used; in Section III, the
results of two experiments are presented; further discussion is
included in Section IV; and Section V concludes the paper.
II. M ETHODS
A. Data Acquisition System
A customized EOG acquisition device was designed to
record and preprocess the EOG signals. The major modules
included a pre-amplifier, a driven right leg (DRL) circuit, a
bandpass filter (1-30 Hz), and a post-amplifier. The overall
gain of the amplifiers was approximately 2,000, and the
sampling rate was 250 Hz. The DRL was used to reduce the
common-mode interference. Fig. 1 illustrates the placements
of three wet electrodes (“CH1”, “COM”, and “COMLEG”),
each of which corresponds to one channel of the device.
“CH1” was placed above the left eyebrow and used to record
vertical EOG signals. The reference electrode, “COM”, was
attached to the left mastoid. “COMLEG” was located on the
right mastoid and was used as the input of the DRL. The
impedances of all the electrodes were maintained below 5 kΩ.
Fig. 1. Electrode placement. CH1: EOG electrode; COM: reference; COM-
LEG: electrode to record the input signals of the DRL circuit.
B. Graphical User Interface and Control Mechanism
The GUI used in this study is illustrated in Fig. 2. It consists
of two levels: a switch GUI (Fig. 2 (a)) and a control panel
(Fig. 2 (b)). Initially, the switch GUI is presented to the user,
which includes a single button (“On”) flashing at 1 Hz. The
user can select this button by blinking synchronously with
its flashes to switch on the control panel (see the details in
the Detection Algorithm section). Once the control panel is
switched on, the GUI in Fig. 2 (b) is presented, in which
13 buttons are included. The buttons flash one by one in a
pre-defined sequence. The interval between the onsets of two
sequential flashes is 90 ms. Thus, the period of a flashing
round (a complete cycle in which each button flashes once)
is 1.17 s (13 × 90 ms). Among the 13 buttons on the control
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(a)
(b)
Fig. 2. The GUI consists of two levels: a switch GUI (a) and a control
panel (b). In the switch GUI, the “On” button is used to switch on the
control panel. In the control panel, thirteen buttons are displayed, including
two speed buttons (“Forward1”, “Forward2”), 8 direction buttons (“L1”-“L4”,
“R1”-“R4”), a “Stop” button, a “Backward” button, and an “Off” button to
switch off the control panel.
panel, the “Forward1” and “Forward2” buttons imply forward
motions with low speed of 0.1 m/s and high speed of 0.3 m/s,
respectively. When the wheelchair is static, the user selects
the “Forward1” button to move forward at the low speed.
The “Forward2” button is valid only when the wheelchair is
moving at the low speed, and it corresponds to accelerating to
the high speed. If the wheelchair is moving at the high speed
and the user selects the ”Forward1” button, then the wheelchair
decelerates to the low speed. For the backward motion, the
speed is set at 0.1 m/s for safety. Direction control is achieved
with eight direction buttons (“L1”-“L4”, “R1”-“R4”). The four
buttons on the left from “L1” to “L4” correspond to turning
left at 5◦ , 30◦ , 45◦ , and 90◦ , respectively. Similarly, “R1”
to “R4” correspond to turning right at 5◦ , 30◦ , 45◦ , and 90◦ ,
respectively. The “Off” button is used to switch off the control
panel and reset the GUI to the switch GUI.
In our system, the control state indicates that the user is
currently performing a control task by blinking according to
a button’s flashes, whereas the idle state indicates that the
user does not wish to perform any control task. If the user
wishes to stay in the idle state for a long time (in this case,
the wheelchair is static), he/she needs to switch off the control
panel to reduce the incidence of false commands issued in the
idle state.
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3
C. Algorithm
In this study, the algorithm can be divided into two parts:
(i) the blink detection and (ii) the decision-making process.
The blink detection is performed after each button flash. First,
a sub-segment (100-500 ms after the onset of the flash) is de-
rived from the recorded EOG signals, and several features are
extracted, such as the peak value of the sub-segment and the
duration of the blink. Then, the algorithm determines whether
these features satisfy threshold conditions for amplitude, speed
and duration. If all of the threshold conditions are satisfied,
a blink is detected for the corresponding button. At the end
of each flashing round, the algorithm selects a button that
contains a blink in the sub-segment as the potential target of
this round according to the delay between the onset of the flash
and the peak of the blink waveform. If no blink is detected, the
potential target of this round is empty. A command is issued
only if the corresponding button is selected as the potential
target at least twice in the latest three rounds, i.e., if the
detected blinks are synchronized with the button’s flashes.
Then, the GUI is paused for a pre-defined time (e.g., 2 s)
to allow the associated wheelchair movement to be executed,
and a new flashing round starts when the pause time is over.
If there is no repeated selection in the latest three rounds, the
GUI continues to flash. This algorithm is used to select most
buttons, and some differences exist for the “On”, “Off”, and
“Stop” buttons. Further details are described in the following
paragraphs.
1) Blink detection: Blink detection is performed after each
button flash. The recorded EOG is first filtered by a digital
bandpass filter (1-10 Hz), and then a sub-segment (100-500
ms after the onset of a flash) is derived from the filtered
EOG signal for each button flash. Several features, including
the peak value of the filtered signal amax , the time delay of
the peak tp , the maximal dfferentiated value smax , and the
duration dpn (as shown in Fig. 3), are extracted from each sub-
segment. tp is the time delay between the onset of the flash
and the peak of the waveform. The duration dpn is defined as
the interval from the peak to the valley of the differentiated
shape. The differential of the original signal is approximated
by the first-order difference:
′
F (n) = F (n) − F (n − 1), (1)
where F (n) is the value of the nth sampling point in a sub-
′
segment, and F (n) is the corresponding differential value.
Similar to the multi-threshold algorithm proposed in [21],
we set thresholds for amplitude, duration and speed (differenti-
ated value) to indicate whether there is a blink waveform in the
sub-segment of a button’s flash. Thus, a successful detection
of a blink should satisfy the following inequalities:
amax ≥ Ath
smax ≥ Sth (2)
D1 ≤ dpn ≤ D2
where Ath and Sth are the amplitude and speed thresholds, re-
spectively, and D1 and D2 represent the minimal and maximal
thresholds of the time duration. The values of all thresholds
are determined in a calibration process (see the Calibration
section).
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4000 and the GUI starts a new flashing round. If there is no repeated
blink waveform
potential target in the latest three rounds, the GUI continues
a max
to flash.
When the switch GUI is presented, there is only one button
Ath
3500 (“On”) flashing at 1 Hz. Thus, the decision-making process is
Amplitude (mV)

simplified: The “On” button is selected if a blink is detected in

its EOG sub-segment at least twice in the latest three flashes.
Moreover, in this study, the user needs to select the “On”/“Off”
3000
button twice within 10 s to switch the control panel on or off
to avoid false startup or shutdown of the control panel.
With the exception of the synchronous decision strategy,
a fast decision strategy can be achieved by directly using
tp the potential target of the latest round as the final decision.
2500
100 200 300 400 500
As a result, the time consumed to generate a command is
Time (ms)
reduced, but the accuracy might be affected, and an unintended
(a) blink is more likely to result in a false command. Further
150
comparison between the synchronous decision strategy and the
fast decision strategy is discussed in the Discussion section.
100
In this study, we apply only the fast decision strategy on the
stop command. Specifically, if the “Stop” button is selected as
s max
S th the potential target, then a stop command is issued directly to
Amplitude (V/s)

50
0
−50 differentiated shape
−100
d pn
−150 t1 t2
100 200 300 400 500
Time (ms)
(b)
Fig. 3. Typical waveforms of (a) an eye blink and (b) its differentiated shape.
amax : the peak value of the filtered signal; dpn : the duration of a blink; tp :
the delay between the onset of the flash and the peak of the waveform; Ath :
the amplitude threshold; smax : the maximal differentiated value; Sth : the
speed threshold. The x-axis indicates the timing after the onset of a flash.
2) Decision making: When the control panel of the GUI is
switched on, at the end of each flashing round, the algorithm
selects one button from those containing a blink in its EOG
sub-segment as the potential target of this round by evaluating
the delay tp . Specifically, the evaluation process is described
by the following equation:
e = |tp − Tp |
where e is the evaluation value and Tp represents the average
delay, which varies among individuals and is determined in the
calibration process. The button with the minimal evaluation
value is selected as the potential target of this round. To
improve the accuracy of the system, a command is issued
if the corresponding button is selected at least twice in the
latest three rounds, which indicates that the detected blinks are
synchronized with the target button’s flashes (for simplicity,
this strategy is referred to as the “synchronous decision strat-
egy” in the rest of this paper). Once the associated wheelchair
movement is executed, all previous selections are discarded
stop the wheelchair.
D. Calibration
The thresholds Ath , Sth , D1 , D2 and the average delay
Tp vary among individuals. Thus, a calibration process is
performed for each user before he/she starts to control the
wheelchair. Specifically, after the EOG acquisition device
starts to record signals, a single button (“Test”) is presented
on the center of the screen, flashing 10 times at 1 Hz.
The user is asked to blink once according to each flash.
Similar to the blink detection process, the recorded EOG is
filtered, and a sub-segment is derived for each flash. Waveform
features, including amax , smax , tp , and dpn , are extracted
from these 10 sub-segments. If the user misses one flash,
the corresponding sub-segment is removed, and the features
are averaged across the rest of the sub-segments. The average
values of amax , smax , and tp are selected as the amplitude
threshold, Ath , the speed threshold, Sth , and the average
delay, Tp , respectively. The duration thresholds D1 and D2
are calculated by multiplying the average value of dpn by
empirical factors (e.g., D1 = 0.8 × dpn and D2 = 1.2 × dpn ).
III. E XPERIMENTS AND R ESULTS
(3) In this study, experiments under different scenarios were
conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed EOG-
based HMI. First, four healthy male subjects with normal eye
movements participated in three experiments to evaluate the
overall performance of the proposed HMI. Next, four patients
with spinal cord injuries were involved in two experiments to
show the potential application of the proposed HMI in daily
life. The wheelchair used was a UL8W [PIHSIANG MA-
CHINERY CO. LTD.], 0.67m × 0.6m in size; a regular laptop
was placed in the front of the wheelchair to present the GUI.
Two ultrasonic ranging modules (HC-SR04) were installed at
the front and back of the wheelchair. The wheelchair would
be stopped immediately if one of the feedback distances was

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TABLE I
RESULTS FROM HEALTHY SUBJECTS BASED ON THE PROPOSED HMI

Subjects Accuracy (%) RT (s) FPR (events/min) ITR (bits/min) No. of Commands No. of Electrodes
S1 95 3.83 0 / 13 3
S2 93.3 3.56 0 / 13 3
S3 100 3.34 0 / 13 3
S4 98.3 3.42 0 / 13 3
Mean 96.7 3.53 0 57.3 13 3

TABLE II
RESULTS FROM HEALTHY SUBJECTS BASED ON AN ESTABLISHED HMI

Subjects Accuracy (%) RT (s) FPR (events/min) ITR (bits/min) No. of Commands No. of Electrodes
S1 85 3.13 4.3 / 7 5
S2 87.1 3.19 3.5 / 7 5
S3 83.6 3.13 4.1 / 7 5
S4 89 3.16 2.8 / 7 5
Mean 86.2 3.15 3.67 35.8 7 5

reduced below 0.5 m. The following performance indicators
were used to evaluate the proposed HMI:
1) Time, the time required to complete the experiment;
2) Violations, the number of times that the wheelchair ran
out of bounds;
3) Response Time (RT), the time required to generate a
command;
4) Operations, the number of commands generated;
5) Accuracy, the probability of correct selection;
6) False Positive Rate (FPR), the false commands generated
per minute during the idle time (when there were no
intended blinks);
7) Information Transfer Rate (ITR), bits of information
transferred per minute.
A. For Healthy Subjects
Four healthy male subjects (numbered S1-S4, aged between
24 and 26) with normal eye movements were involved in one
synchronous experiment (with cues) and two asynchronous
experiments (indoor and outdoor). Each subject performed
the three experiments on three different days. Among those
subjects, S3 and S4 had prior experience of the proposed
HMI, whereas S1 and S2 were using the system for the first
time. Before the experiments, each subject received a brief
introduction to the system and completed an informed consent
form. Next, each subject completed the Calibration process
to determine the thresholds, as described in Section II-D:
Calibration. Further descriptions of the three experiments are
given below.
1) Synchronous Experiment for Healthy Subjects: This
experiment aimed to compare the proposed HMI with an
established EOG-based HMI. It consisted of two sessions,
which were based on the proposed HMI and an established
EOG-based HMI. Each session contained three blocks. In each
block, the subjects were tasked with selecting 20 randomly
generated target buttons (i.e. 20 trials). In addition, there was
a 1-min break between each two consecutive blocks.
In the first session, the subjects completed 60 trials
(3 blocks × 20 trials/block) using the proposed HMI without
the wheelchair. Specifically, at the beginning of a trial, a
random target cue was presented on the control panel for 4
s. The 13 buttons on the control panel then started flashing
one by one in a pre-defined sequence. The subject selected
the target by blinking according to its flashes. Once a button
was determined, the control panel stopped flashing, and the
selected button was highlighted for 300 ms as the feedback
to the subject. Then, the system started a new trial. After
the three blocks, a 10-min idle task was implemented in
which the subjects just relaxed and browsed the Web with the
proposed HMI running in the background. Any false output
would be recorded to calculate the false positive rate (FPR).
Other indicators, such as the accuracy and the response time
(RT), were calculated according to the experimental results. In
addition, the information transfer rate (ITR, bits/min), which
has been widely used to evaluate HMIs [24], was calculated
according to the following formula [4]:
1−P
IT R = 60(log2 N +P log2 P +(1−P ) log2 [ ])/T (4)
N −1
where N is the number of commands, P is the average
accuracy and T is the average response time.
To compare the proposed HMI with state-of-the-art technol-
ogy, we reproduced an established EOG-based HMI proposed
by Ma et al. in [21]. In Ma’s system, seven types of eye
movements (double blinks, triple blinks, left wink, right wink,
left gaze, right gaze and frown) were identified based on the
recorded EOG signals and corresponded to seven commands
to control a mobile robot. All single blinks were regarded as
unintended blinks and were abandoned. In the second session
of this experiment, the subjects performed three blocks, each
containing 20 trials, using Ma’s HMI. For one trial, a random
target cue was presented on screen for 4 s. The subject then
performed the corresponding eye movement. As feedback to
the subjects, the identification result was displayed on the
screen for 1 s, and the system then started a new trial. Similar

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Subjects Time of
Part 1 (s)
S1 379
S2 420
S3 350
S4 344
Mean 373
to the first session, a 10-min idle task was implemented for
each subject, and the corresponding FPR was calculated.
The experimental results of the two sessions are shown
in Tables I and II. The proposed HMI used three electrodes
to generate thirteen commands. On average, it achieved an
accuracy of 96.7%, an RT of 3.53 s, and an ITR of 57.3
bits/min. No false output was recorded (FPR = 0). For Ma’s
HMI, five electrodes were needed to generate seven command-
s. The average accuracy, RT, and ITR of Ma’s HMI were
86.2%, 3.15 s, and 35.8 bits/min, respectively. Due to the
unintended eye movements, the average FPR of MI’s HMI
was 3.67 events/min. Note that the accuracy of Ma’s HMI
(86.2%) in our experiment was higher than that presented
in [21] (79.5%). One possible reason for the difference was
that in our experiment, the subjects manipulated the HMI
without controlling any peripheral equipment, which might
help them concentrate on the tasks. In summary, compared
with Ma’s HMI, the proposed HMI could produce more
control commands with higher accuracy, higher ITR, lower
FPR and fewer electrodes. The RT for the proposed HMI
was slightly longer than that for Ma’s HMI, which was an
acceptable trade-off.
2) Asynchronous Experiment I: The Indoor Experiment:
In the Indoor Experiment, we built a path (with width of 1.3
m) in a quiet and well-illuminated laboratory, as shown in
Fig. 4. The path could be divided into two parts. Part 1 was
designed as a simple maze inside a room, and Part 2 was
localized in a lab corridor. These parts were connected by a
door with a width of 1.1 m. The obstacles surrounding the
path were removed for safety. The subjects were asked to
use the proposed HMI to drive the wheelchair through the
path without crossing the boundaries. Each subject performed
two trials. In each trial, the subject started from a beginning
point (B1 or B2), went through Parts 1 and 2 by following
the arrows on the ground, and finally reached the end. In
Part 1, the subjects should decide each movement based on
their own observations and favorites without any guidance,
whereas in Part 2, the supervisor randomly ordered the subjects
to perform movements, such as stop, moving forward and
backward, acceleration and deceleration. The total Time and
Operations were recorded for Part 1 only, because in Part 2
they were randomly determined or affected by the supervisor.
Specifically, the Time in Part 1 was the interval from beginning
at B1 or B2 to reaching the door. Once a command was issued,
the system added 1 to the Operations. If the issued command
was not the target one, the subjects gave a sign (e.g., raising
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6
TABLE III
RESULTS OF THE INDOOR EXPERIMENT
Operations Selection errors Stop RT (s) A/D RT (s) Violations
in Part 1 in Part 1
47 1 2.20 3.57 0
50 2 2.03 3.66 0
35 1 1.91 3.46 0
41 1 1.55 3.54 0
43.3 1.3 1.92 3.56 0
hands slightly), and the supervisor recorded it as a selection
error. The response time in asynchronous experiments was
defined as the interval between the moment when the subjects
heard a voice prompt, such as “Forward” and “Stop”, and
the moment that the corresponding command was issued.
Moreover, if there were no intended blinks but a command
was issued, it was recorded as a false output.
The results of the Indoor Experiment are shown in Table III.
All indicators were averaged across the two trials for each sub-
ject. For all of the subjects, the A/D (acceleration/deceleration)
response time was 3.56 s. By employing the fast decision
strategy, the stop response time was 1.92 s. Note that the
response time of the direction control commands were not
recorded because the direction control should be completely
based on the subjects’ own observations for safety. No vio-
lations or emergency stops were recorded. The experimental
results demonstrated that the proposed EOG-based HMI could
be used to effectively control the wheelchair.
Fig. 4. Top-down view of the pre-defined path in the Indoor Experiment. Part
1 is a simple maze inside a room, and Part 2 is a lab corridor. The parts are
connected by a door with width of 1.1 m. B1 and B2 are the starting points;
End is the end point.
3) Asynchronous Experiment II: The Outdoor Experiment:
The Outdoor Experiment was designed to verify that the pro-
posed HMI could be used to effectively control a wheelchair
in an outdoor environment. We selected a rectangular space
(9 m × 5 m) in a campus parking slot as the experimental
field, as shown in Fig. 5 (a). Five fixed destinations and various
obstacles were positioned in the field (Fig. 5 (b)). The subjects
were tasked with driving the wheelchair to these destinations
sequentially (i.e., starting at 1 and ending in 5) without breaks.
To compare the proposed HMI with a common HMI (the
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(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 5. (a) Actual scene of the Outdoor Experiment in a campus parking slot. (b) General view of the experimental field (9 m × 5 m) with destinations (black
circles with numbers) and obstacles (red circles). (c) Trajectory that S4 maneuvered using a joystick. (d) Trajectory that S4 maneuvered using the proposed
HMI.

joystick), each subject performed two trials using either the B. For Patients with SCIs
proposed HMI or a joystick. The experienced subjects S3 and To verify the effectiveness of the proposed HMI for the
S4 were involved. During the experiment, the subjects were end-users, we further applied it to patients with SCIs. Four
supposed to control the wheelchair independently, while extra patients (numbered P1-P4; one female and three males; aged
measures were implemented to enable the supervisor to stop between 22 and 32; see Table VI) from Sichuan Provin-
the wheelchair in case of emergency. cial Rehabilitation Hospital were involved in a Synchronous
The results of the outdoor experiment are shown in Table Experiment and an Asynchronous Experiment. Each patient
IV. For both subjects, the total time spent using the proposed completed the two experiments in one day. All of the patients
HMI was approximately 1.22-fold longer than that using a were able to perform normal eye movements and had no
joystick. No violations or emergency stops were recorded prior experience in using EOG-based HMIs. More individual
during the experiments. We also drew the trajectories that information of the patients is presented in Table V. The ex-
S4 drove through in the experiment using a joystick and the periments were approved by the Ethics Committee of Sichuan
proposed HMI respectively, as shown in Figs. 5 (c) and 5 (d). Provincial Rehabilitation Hospital and complied with the Code
When using the joystick, the track was smoother compared of Ethics of the World Medical Association. Written informed
with using the proposed HMI because the proposed HMI only consents for the experiment and the publication of individual
provided discrete commands. information were obtained from the patients and their legal
guardians. Before the experiments, each patient received a
brief introduction to the system and completed the Calibration
TABLE IV
RESULTS OF THE OUTDOOR EXPERIMENT process as described in the Calibration section. More details
of the two experiments are described below.
Subjects Time when using the Time when using the Violations 1) Synchronous Experiment for Patients with SCIs: The
proposed HMI (s) joystick (s) Synchronous Experiment for patients was similar to the
S3 290 238 0 Synchronous Experiment for healthy subjects. Each patient
S4 263 215 0 completed three blocks (60 trials) using the proposed HMI
Mean 277 227 0 without the wheelchair. For one trial, a random target cue was
presented on the control panel for 4 s. The 13 buttons on
the control panel started flashing one by one in a pre-defined

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TABLE V Physical Demand, Temporal Demand, Overall Performance,

INDIVIDUAL INFORMATION OF PATIENTS Effort, and Frustration Level [26]. The subscales are rated
within a 100-point range with 5-point steps. All patients
Patients Gender Age Pathogenesis Time of onset ASIA
(month) completed the questionnaire independently. As shown in Table
P1 Female 23 Myelitis 4 C4-C
VII, the average rating of the temporal demand was 40, and
P2 Male 25 Falling injury 48 C5-B the ratings for other subscales were below 25, which indicated
P3 Male 32 Falling injury 8 C7-B that the overall workload of using the proposed HMI to control
P4 Male 22 Myelitis 36 C5-C
a wheelchair was acceptable.
AISA: American Spinal Injury Association. Details
of AISA impairment scales can be found in [25]
IV. D ISCUSSION

TABLE VI In this paper, we propose a novel EOG-based HMI that

RESULTS OF THE SYNCHRONOUS EXPERIMENT FOR PATIENTS
Patients Accuracy (%) RT (s) FPR ITR
(events/min) (bits/min)
P1 88.3 4.3 0 /
P2 90 3.2 0 /
P3 95 3.9 0 /
P4 93.3 3.3 0 /
Mean 91.7 3.67 0 48.8
sequence. The subject selected the target by blinking according
to its flashes. The selected button was highlighted for 300 ms
as feedback to the subject. The system then started a new trial.
The 10-min idle task was implemented after the three blocks
to record the FPR.
Indicators, such as the accuracy, RT, ITR, and FPR, were
calculated and are shown in Table VI. On average, the pro-
posed HMI achieved an accuracy of 91.7% and an RT of
3.67 s. No false output was recorded, and the ITR was 48.8
bits/min.
2) Asynchronous Experiment for Patients with SCIs: The
Asynchronous Experiment for patients was designed to verify
whether the patients could effectively control a wheelchair
using the proposed HMI. This experiment was similar to the
Outdoor Experiment for healthy subjects except that there was
no joystick as the control condition. The experimental field
was built in an open space in the hospital for the patients’
convenience, and the settings were exactly the same as those
for the healthy subjects. Each patient completed two trials, and
in each of these trials, the patient drove the wheelchair through
the five destinations sequentially (starting at 1 and ending at
5, as shown in Fig. 5 (b)) using the proposed HMI.
According to the experimental results, all patients com-
pleted the experiment without any violations or collisions,
demonstrating that patients with normal eye movements could
effectively control the wheelchair using the proposed HMI.
The time cost to complete both the Synchronous Experi-
ment and the Asynchronous Experiment was approximately
40 minutes in total (including the Calibration process). To
measure the workload involved in using the proposed HMI
over a long period of time, each patient completed a work-
load questionnaire based on the Hart and Staveland’s NASA
Task Load Index (TLX) method after the two experiments
were completed. The NASA TLX method measures the total
workload by dividing it into six subscales: Mental Demand,
provides 13 control commands including left and right turns
with different degrees, forward and backward motions, accel-
eration, deceleration, and stopping. This HMI was realized by
setting 13 flashing buttons, each of which corresponds to a
control command, on the GUI. The users can select a target
button to issue a corresponding control command by blinking
synchronously with the flashes of the button.
In our system, the first challenge is to distinguish the target
and non-target buttons. Specifically, when the user performs
a blink according to a flash of the target button, the blink
waveform appears in the sub-segment of the EOG after the
onset of the flash with a time delay. The delay, which is mainly
due to the human response time for reacting to the flash, is
defined as the interval between the onset of the flash and
the peak of the blink waveform. According to our paradigm
design, the time difference between two adjacent onsets of
button flashes is 90 ms and the length of the EOG sub-segment
of each button’s flash is 400 ms (100-500 ms); therefore
a specific blink may be associated with several temporally
adjacent buttons. For instance, as shown in Fig. 6 (a), the same
blink appears not only in the target button’s sub-segment but
also in those of several temporally adjacent buttons, which
might result in having more than one button that satisfies the
waveform detection criterion. As shown in Fig. 6 (b), for a
user, the peaks of several blink waveforms are located within
a time interval (typically from 280 to 320 ms after the onset
of the target flash in our experiment). One possible reason
is that although the response time for a flash varies among
individuals, it remains relatively stable for a specific user.
According to the offline analysis, the length of the interval
was within 40 ms for all of our subjects. If the blink waveform
is located far away from the interval, it will be assigned to a
non-target button. Thus, to distinguish the target button, we
use the average delay Tp (e.g., 300 ms after the onset of the
target flash) as a criterion, calculate the delay for each button
flash, and then select the button with the corresponding delay
closest to Tp as the potential target of the flashing round. For
the temporally adjacent non-target buttons’ flashes, the delays
were generally far from Tp due to the interval of 90 ms. For
instance, for the green waveform in Fig. 6(a) corresponding to
a non-target button’s flash, the delay was approximately 200
ms. While for the black waveform corresponding to the target
button’s flash, the delay was approximately 290 ms. Thus, we
can distinguish the target and non-target buttons.
The second challenge of the EOG-based HMIs is to rapid-
ly and accurately distinguish intended eye movements from

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TABLE VII
WORKLOAD RATINGS OF PATIENTS

Patients Mental Physical Temporal Performance Effort Frustration

demand demand demand level
P1 20 10 40 20 30 0
P2 20 5 40 20 5 0
P3 20 5 30 20 10 0
P4 20 10 40 25 30 0
Mean 24 14 40 22 23 0
Note: a lower rating means a lower demand level or better performance

unintended ones. In the proposed HMI, the discrimination

between intended blinks and unintended blinks was based on
the synchrony between the detected blinks and the button’s
3800 flashes. Specifically, if a button was selected as the potential
90 ms target at least twice in the latest three rounds, the detected
blinks were thought to be in synchrony with the button’s
3500
flashes, and the button was determined as a target in our
algorithm. This synchronous decision strategy improves the
Amplitude (mV)

accuracy of the system, with a tradeoff of increasing the

3200
time required to generate a command. According to the
results of the Synchronous Experiment for healthy subjects,
the overall accuracy is 96.7%, and the average response times
2900
for all commands and for ”STOP” were 3.53 s and 1.92 s,
respectively, which are satisfactory.
Another challenge for EOG-based HMIs is to discriminate
different types of eye movements such as blink and wink based
2600
100 200 300 400 500 on EOG signals. In the proposed HMI, only one type of eye
Time (ms) movement (blink) was employed to ensure that the problem
(a) was avoided.
As previously mentioned, the stop command was issued
4000
based on the fast decision strategy to achieve a fast-response
performance. The discount is that an unintended blink might
result in a false stop with a theoretical probability of 7.7%
(i.e., based on a probability of 1/13 that the stop button is
3500
Amplitude (mV)

selected from the 13 buttons by an unintended blink). This

rate is considered acceptable for two reasons: (i) during the
experiments, the users seldom perform unintended blinks since
they need to voluntarily blink to generate commands; and (ii) a
3000 false stop does not lead to any risky situation. According to the
experimental results, the average Stop RT was 1.92 s, and no
false stops were recorded (FPR = 0). The results demonstrate
Tp
the effectiveness of our stop strategy.
2500
Safety is a major concern for wheelchair control and was
100 200 300 400 500
Time (ms) guaranteed from the following three folds in this study. (i)
(b) For the proposed system, the glide distance for stopping is
approximately 0.6 m (wheelchair velocity: 0.3 m/s; Stop RT:
Fig. 6. (a) Temporally adjacent buttons’ EOG sub-segments. Each of the approximately 2 s). In the experiments, because the positions
sub-segments includes the same blink waveform (the black waveform is for of all obstacles and boundaries were fixed, the users could
a target button, whereas the others are for temporally adjacent buttons). (b) blink to stop ahead of time in order to avoid any violation
Waveforms of six blinks according to six target button flashes. The peaks are
located within a time interval typically from 280 to 320 ms after the onset or emergency stop. (ii) According to the experimental results,
of the flash. Tp represents the average delay between the onset of the flashes the false positive rate was 0 for all users, which guaranties
and the peaks of the blink waveforms. The x-axis indicates the timing after that the system outputs commands only when the users are
the onset of a flash, and the y-axis indicates the amplitude of EOG.
intended to do so. (iii) In case of emergency, two ultrasonic
ranging modules (HC-SR04), installed at the front and back
of the wheelchair, will stop the wheelchair immediately if one
of the feedback distances is reduced below 0.5 m.

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As for the paradigm design, the proposed HMI implemented
a pre-defined flashing sequence instead of random sequences.
For an oddball paradigm such as the P300-based BCI speller,
random sequences were necessary for generating the oddball
effects and for reducing interferences from adjacent buttons.
However, in this study, we used EOG signals associated with
eye blinks instead of P300 extracted from EEG. As long
as the time interval between two temporal adjacent button
flashes was sufficiently long and the subject was blinking
synchronously with the flashes of the target button, the EOG
signals associated with the blinks would be correctly assigned
to the target button. Thus, a pre-defined sequence with a 90-
ms interval between two temporal adjacent button flashes was
used in our paradigm. According to the experimental results
(e.g., an average accuracy of 96.7% for healthy subjects), the
90-ms interval was sufficient to determine the target button
almost without the interferences from the temporal adjacent
buttons.
Furthermore, the proposed HMI provides discrete com-
mands for direction control. Note that the actual turning angles
cannot be absolutely accurate because many factors could
affect the accuracy of direction control, such as the topography,
friction, and the working state of the motor. However, because
the proposed HMI generated control commands with high
accuracy and a relatively short RT, all subjects completed
the experiments successfully, indicating that the accuracy of
direction control was sufficient for this application. To further
demonstrate this accuracy, we compared the proposed HMI
with a joystick. The time consumed using the proposed HMI
was 1.22-fold longer than that using the joystick, which is
thought to be an acceptable result because the joystick is a
manual and mature HMI for controlling a wheelchair.
V. C ONCLUSION
A major challenge in the design of a non-manual HMI for
wheelchair control is to rapidly, accurately, and sufficiently
produce control commands. In this paper, a novel HMI based
on only one type of eye movement (blink) and one EOG
channel is presented for wheelchair control. The GUI includes
13 flashing buttons, which correspond to 13 control commands
associated with direction control with different degrees, for-
ward and backward motions, acceleration, deceleration, and
stopping. The user selects a target button by blinking in sync
with its flashes. The algorithm discriminates the intended and
unintended blinks mainly based on the synchrony between the
eye blinks and the flashes of a button. According to the ex-
perimental results, the average accuracies and RTs for healthy
subjects/patients with SCIs were 96.7%/91.7% and 3.53 s/3.67
s, respectively. Compared with a newly published EOG-based
HMI, the proposed HMI provides more commands with higher
accuracy and ITR, lower FPR and fewer electrodes. The trade-
off is that the response time is slightly longer. Thus, the
effectiveness of the system is demonstrated. In the future work,
we will continue to reduce the cost of the system and will
expand the application range.
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10
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