Analysis of commercial BCI solutions for automotive applications

Nowadays the influence of modern technologies has dramatically changed the concept of the vehicle in our community, moving from a simple means of transport to a complex machine able to meet driver needs. The automotive division of the Luxoft company, situated in Torino (Italy), within its research and development branch, is studying different approaches and techniques to improve and extend the driving experience. All the efforts are concentrated on the Tele-Operated car, an electric vehicle that can be driven via a network interface. It accepts UDP packets as input messages and converts them to commands for electrical actuators situated on the steering column and the pedals of the car. In that context, the Xavier project is born. The Xavier project, named like the fictional character with telepathic powers appearing in the X-men comic universe, is a long term development project for interns in Luxoft. This project presents the development process of an end-to-end infrastructure between driver and vehicle, thanks to the Brain-computer interface technology. The main objective has been to deepen the effectiveness of commercial BCI solutions such as an interface for drivers affected by disabilities. The project is reaching, with the end of this internship experience, the third development iteration. During these iterations, the whole know-how of BCI technology applied to the automotive applications has been transferred and enhanced. The starting point of this thesis was the first implementation of the Xavierapplication (version 1.1) implementing the base commands needed to achieve the first ride, and a series of tests made directly on the road about the reliability of the system. During this thesis project, a new application (v2.0) has been developed looking for an overall improvement in terms of capability and usability. A new Graphic-user-interface has been provided and the new version is currently able to interoperate directly with the official application provided by the BCI manufacturer. Besides complete, reliable, and safe simulation environment has been deployed to test the system indoor; the simulation environment has been taught to be extensible,easy-to-configure and to be as light as possible from a computational cost point of view.