bci_koala

Mini projet: a brain-controlled robot.

The principle

3 parts so far:

A BCI listener/streamer

Neural signals to guide the robots are captured here. They fall into one of those 4 categories:

• Turn left
• Turn right
• Go forward
• Do nothing (default)

Those signals are direct neural electric signals captured by electrodes on a man's head. Signals are grouped into fixed-length buffers and sent to the next layer:

A frequency analyzer

Once a satisfactory sample has been recorded, it's sent to an analyzer layer. This layer must determine the action that is being ordered by the man. Each action corresponds to a signal with a certain defined frequency (they actually come from staring at flashing lights). The analyzer thus conducts a frequency analysis of the given sample and then decides what action to send to the next layer:

A robot (or close to one)

The robot is given an order and must then execute it. For now, we'll do with a robot's simulation and an Arduino Serial communication.

Dependencies/requirements

This project was made using Python 3.6: please make sure to install the interpreter before running the code. 3 non-standard libraries were used: to install them, simply run pip install -r ./requirements.txt from the source folder.

You are given 2 options for running the code: either on a single machine or on different ones. In the latter case, please be sure to specify the right IP addresses of your machines when interconnecting the different components (localhost by default).

The code

3 main Python scripts should be detailed:

The Streamer

streamer.py parses a .txt recording and sends it to an analyzer via a socket.

How to start: python streamer.py

The Analyzer

analyzer.py parses the buffers received from the Streamer and analyzes them. It then sends an action to an actioner via another socket. It uses functions from helpers.py, located in the utils folder.

How to start:

1. Start the Streamer
2. python -i analyzer.py
3. analyzer.connect()
4. analyzer.run()

The Actioner

actioner.py parses the actions received from the Analyzer and executes them. So far it uses turtle to mock the robot and sends serial communications to an Arduino board.

How to start:

1. Start the Analyzer
2. python -i actioner.py
3. actioner.connect()
4. actioner.run()

Bonuses

Docstring

Docstring is available for those 3 modules, just use help(ClassName) to get info on any of those classes (doc coming soon).

Arduino

The Actioner sends signals over a specified Serial USB port (COM7 by default) at a certain BaudRate (9600by default), expecting to reach an Arduino board programmed to read those signals. Such a code is provided in the arduino folder: this code can be televersed on an Arduino Uno board using the Arduino IDE and matching the following schematics for pin-outs: