Development of an EMG based SVM supported control solution for the PlatypOUs education mobile robot using MindRove headset

Abstract

This paper describes the development of PlatypOUs - an open-source electromyography (EMG)-controlled mobile robot platform that uses the MindRove Brain Computer Interface (BCI) headset as signal acquisition unit, implementing remote control. Simultaneously with the physical mobile robot, simulation environment is also prepared using Gazebo, within the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework, with the same capabilities as the physical device, from the point of view of the ROS. The purpose of the PlatypOUs project is to create a tool for STEM-based education, and it involves two major disciplines: mobile robotics and machine learning, with several sub-areas included in each. The use of the platform and the simulation environment exposes students to hands-on laboratory sessions, which contribute to their progression as engineers. An important feature of our project is that the platform is made up of open-source and easily available commercial hardware and software components. In this paper, an electromyography (EMG) based controller has been developed using support vector machine (SVM) based classification for robot control purposes.