EEG-based brain-computer interface enables real-time robotic hand control at individual finger level

Abstract Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) connect human thoughts to external devices, offering the potential to enhance life quality for individuals with motor impairments and general population. Noninvasive BCIs are accessible to a wide audience but currently face challenges, including unintuitive mappings and imprecise control. In this study, we present a real-time noninvasive robotic control system using movement execution (ME) and motor imagery (MI) of individual finger movements to drive robotic finger motions. The proposed system advances state-of-the-art electroencephalography (EEG)-BCI technology by decoding brain signals for intended finger movements into corresponding robotic motions. In a study involving 21 able-bodied experienced BCI users, we achieved real-time decoding accuracies of 80.56% for two-finger MI tasks and 60.61% for three-finger tasks. Brain signal decoding was facilitated using a deep neural network, with fine-tuning enhancing BCI performance. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of naturalistic noninvasive robotic hand control at the individuated finger level.