A Survey of Interactive Systems based on Brain-Computer Interfaces

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) enables users to interact with a computer only through their brain biological signals, without the need to use muscles. BCI is an emerging research area but it is still relatively immature. However, it is important to reflect on the different aspects of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) area related to BCIs, considering that BCIs will be part of interactive systems in the near future. BCIs most attend not only to handicapped users, but also healthy ones, improving interaction for end-users. Virtual Reality (VR) is also an important part of interactive systems, and combined with BCI could greatly enhance user interactions, improving the user experience by using brain signals as input with immersive environments as output. This paper addresses only noninvasive BCIs, since this kind of capture is the only one to not present risk to human health. As contributions of this work we highlight the survey of interactive systems based on BCIs focusing on HCI and VR applications, and a discussion on challenges and future of this subject matter.