EEG-based AI-BCI wheelchair advancement: Transformer-based learning with motor imagery for brain computer interface

This article presents an artificial intelligence integrated approach to brain-computer interface-based wheelchair development, utilizing a motor imagery right-left-hand movement mechanism for control. The system is designed to simulate wheelchair navigation based on motor imagery right- and left-hand movements using electroencephalogram (EEG) data. A pre-filtered dataset, obtained from an open-source EEG repository, was segmented into arrays of 19 × 200 to capture the onset of hand movements. The data were acquired at a sampling frequency of 200 Hz. The system integrates a Tkinter-based interface for simulating wheelchair movements, offering users a functional and intuitive control system. We propose TFormerEEG, a Transformer-driven deep learning architecture, for motor imagery EEG classification. The model achieves a test accuracy of 93.04% compared with various machine learning baseline models, including XGBoost, EEGNet, and an EEG-Deformer model. The TFormerEEG achieved a mean accuracy of 91.18% through stratified cross-validation, showcasing the effectiveness of this model.