Investigation of the effect of EEG-BCI on the simultaneous execution of flight simulation and attentional tasks.
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are widely used for clinical applications and exploited to design robotic and interactive systems for healthy people. We provide evidence to control a sensorimotor electroencephalographic (EEG) BCI system while piloting a flight simulator and attending a double attentional task simultaneously. Ten healthy subjects were trained to learn how to manage a flight simulator, use the BCI system, and answer to the attentional tasks independently. Afterward, the EEG activity was collected during a first flight where subjects were required to concurrently use the BCI, and a second flight where they were required to simultaneously use the BCI and answer to the attentional tasks. Results showed that the concurrent use of the BCI system during the flight simulation does not affect the flight performances. However, BCI performances decrease from the 83 to 63 % while attending additional alertness and vigilance tasks. This work shows that it is possible to successfully control a BCI system during the execution of multiple tasks such as piloting a flight simulator with an extra cognitive load induced by attentional tasks. Such framework aims to foster the knowledge on BCI systems embedded into vehicles and robotic devices to allow the simultaneous execution of secondary tasks.
['Vecchiato|Giovanni|G|http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6037-5806', 'Borghini|Gianluca|G|', 'Aricò|Pietro|P|', 'Graziani|Ilenia|I|', 'Maglione|Anton Giulio|AG|', 'Cherubino|Patrizia|P|', 'Babiloni|Fabio|F|']
D000328:Adult D001288:Attention D001359:Aviation D062207:Brain-Computer Interfaces D003198:Computer Simulation D004569:Electroencephalography D006801:Humans D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted D013647:Task Performance and Analysis D055815:Young Adult
Flight simulator Alertness Vigilance Brain computer interface Electroencephalography