Author: rsonecha

This week I secured the EEG EmotivPRO subscription which has been blocking our progress on EEG-based focus state detection. With the subscription, we can now build out the data labeling platform for Professor Dueck and being implementing some basic detection model which takes in the EmotivPRO performance metrics and outputs a focus state, either focused, distracted, or neutral. I was able to collect some initial readings wearing the headset myself while working at home. I began familiarizing myself with the Emotiv API, connected to the headset via python code, and collected performance metric data from the headset. I am currently encountering an error when trying to download the performance metric data from the headset to a CSV on my laptop, which I suspect is some sort of issue with the way the license is configured or from not properly passing in credentials somewhere in the script. I also spent a significant amount of time working on the design report which is due next week. Finally, I began researching what kinds of detection models would lend themselves to our EEG-based focus level detection and settled in on a 1D (time series tailored) Convolutional Neural Network which I will begin experimenting with as soon as we finalize our data collection platform and we have determined what format we will be reading in the data. Overall, my progress is still on schedule. Looking forward to next week, I plan to implement the data collection platform with Arnav, do some further CNN research/testing, and finalize our design report for submission.

This week I spent time understanding how to improve the contact quality of the EEG headset. I set the headset up on myself and spent some time making adjustments, finally reaching 100% contact quality. I met with Justin, who is one of the piano players who Professor Dueck trains to teach him how to wear the headset and introduce him to the EmotivPRO software. I have also continued to research methods for detecting focus via EEG including training an SVM or CNN on EEG frequency bands delta, theta, and alpha which correspond closely to attention. We learned that EmotivPRO comes with detection of attention, interest, cognitive stress, and other brain states already in the form of a numerical performance metric. We are thinking of doing some further processing on these numbers to show a user a binary indicator of whether they are focused or not as well as providing the user with insight as to what factors are playing a role in their focus levels. My progress is on schedule, but I am waiting for purchase of the EmotivPRO subscription which will enable me to begin prototyping something with the EEG data from the headset which is currently blocking me. I will follow up with the ECE inventory/purchasing team to ensure that this does not become an issue given our schedule. In the next week, I hope to set up the EEG focus state data labeling system for Professor Dueck and begin researching/computing correlation metrics between various performance metrics.

This past week, I prepared and presented the proposal presentation. I acquired the Emotiv Insight headset from the ECE inventory and did some initial testing/investigation. I read research papers which studied attention using EEG data to get a better understanding of how to process the raw EEG data and what kinds of models people have had success working with in the past. I set up the headset on myself and got it connected to my laptop via bluetooth. At this point, I encountered some issues trying to get a high fidelity sensor connection to my head. I messed around with adjusting the headset on my head according to the specifications and applying saline solution to the sensor tips. Eventually, I was able to get the sensor contact quality to be steady in the 60-70% range. I also realized that we will need an EmotivPRO subscription to export any of the raw EEG data off the headset, so I filled out the order form and reached out to Quinn about how to go about getting the license. My progress is on schedule. In the next week, I need to chat with Jean to get feedback as to how to improve our sensor contact quality or at least understand what range is acceptable for signal processing. I need to secure the EmotivPRO subscription so we can port the raw EEG data from the headset. At this point, I will work with Arnav to develop a training data labeling platform that Professor Dueck will use to label her students’ raw EEG data as focused, distracted, or neutral. Finally, with the EmotivPRO subscription, I can also start setting up some simple signal processing processes to preprocess and interpret the EEG data from the headset to detect focus levels.