Development and Validation of a BCI-Enabled Boccia Ramp for Sport Participation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We present a brain-computer interface (BCI) system designed to enable individuals with severe motor disabilities to play Boccia, a Paralympic sport. Boccia is a precision sport in which the objective is to get a ball as close as possible to a target. In its most adapted form, Boccia allows for the use of a ramp to assist the user. The proposed system consists of a BCI-enabled ramp that can be controlled by the user's brain signals using a visual control paradigm (i.e., P300, or SSVEP). We developed a software interface using custom tools in Unity and Python for the front-end and back-end, respectively. To validate the software, we tested the system with five subjects who performed six pipelines (three with P300 and three with SSVEP) to simulate real-world use. Each pipeline consisted of 10 guided selections in the software. The classifiers used Riemannian geometry and shrinkage linear discriminant analysis (sLDA) for P300 and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) for SSVEP. The results showed that the P300$(93\pm 3\ \%,\ \text{mean} \pm \text{SEM})$paradigm had higher classification accuracy than the SSVEP$(27\pm 0.02\%, \text{mean} \pm \text{SEM})$paradigm. Additionally, we designed and built a 3D CAD model and a hardware prototype of the ramp. The hardware prototype uses linear actuators to change the incline of the ramp and the height of the ball. Stepper motors allow for the rotation of the ramp and the release mechanism of the ball. Recommendations on improvements to the hardware and software components are made for future prototypes. The presented system opens new possibilities for sports applications that can improve the quality of life of people with severe motor disabilities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".