Preliminary experimentation on vibrotactile feedback in the context of mu-rhythm based BCI

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) need an uninterrupted flow of feedback to the user, which is usually delivered through the visual channel. Our aim is to explore the benefits of vibrotactile feedback during users' training and control of EEG-based BCI applications. An experimental setup for delivery of vibrotactile feedback, including specific hardware and software arrangements, was specified. We compared vibrotactile and visual feedback, addressing the performance in presence of a complex visual task on the same (visual) or different (tactile) sensory channel. The preliminary experimental setup included a simulated BCI control. in which all parts reflected the computational and actuation process of an actual BCI, except the souce, which was simulated using a "noisy" PC mouse. Results indicated that the vibrotactile channel can function as a valuable feedback modality with reliability comparable to the classical visual feedback. Advantages of using a vibrotactile feedback emerged when the visual channel was highly loaded by a complex task.