Effective Human Motor Imagery Recognition via Segment Pool Based on One-Dimensional Convolutional Neural Network with Bidirectional Recurrent Attention Unit Network

Brain–computer interface (BCI) technology enables humans to interact with computers by collecting and decoding electroencephalogram (EEG) from the brain. For practical BCIs based on EEG, accurate recognition is crucial. However, existing methods often struggle to achieve a balance between accuracy and complexity. To overcome these challenges, we propose 1D convolutional neural networks with bidirectional recurrent attention unit network (1DCNN-BiRAU) based on a random segment recombination strategy (segment pool, SegPool). It has three main contributions. First, SegPool is proposed to increase training data diversity and reduce the impact of a single splicing method on model performance across different tasks. Second, it employs multiple 1D CNNs, including local and global models, to extract channel information with simplicity and efficiency. Third, BiRAU is introduced to learn temporal information and identify key features in time-series data, using forward–backward networks and an attention gate in the RAU. The experiments show that our model is effective and robust, achieving accuracy of 99.47% and 91.21% in binary classification at the individual and group levels, and 90.90% and 92.18% in four-category classification. Our model demonstrates promising results for recognizing human motor imagery and has the potential to be applied in practical scenarios such as brain–computer interfaces and neurological disorder diagnosis.