Interfacing Brains to Robotic Devices—A VRPN Communication Application

Communication between robotic devices and the brain became possible due to the advent of Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI). In this context, the Openvibe (OV) software performs brain signal processing in real time. OV is an open source platform which provides tools for visualization and processing of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. It is possible to communicate OV with external devices for BMI applications with Virtual Reality Peripheral Network (VRPN), a device-independent network-based protocol developed to interface application programs to physical devices such as Arduino^Ⓡ boards. In this way, data transmission between OV and Arduino enables the development of BMI projects like activation of prostheses and orthoses via brain activity. Thus, we present a protocol to send keyboard commands from OV to turn a LED on using an Arduino^Ⓡ Uno and a C ++ program to link the OV to the board in order to test communication. Later we show a BMI application to drive an upper-limb prostheses. Although simple, the paradigm described may work as a guideline for communication of brain signals to external devices such as hand orthosis and prosthesis.