Tongue Driving System: Tongue Controlled Wheelchair For Quadriplegics

Professor Maysam Ghovanloo at Georgia Tech has been working hard since 2005 on a system that lets a user control their wheelchair with their tongue. Tongue! His research has borne fruit, and the results are pretty incredible.

This system is most beneficial for people who have high level spinal cord injuries or are quadriplegic.

This is how it works: The user has a magnet placed inside their tongue in the form of a piercing. The

user also wears a headset which actually detects the location of the magnet as the tongue moves. The location is grabbed and wirelessly communicated to an app installed on the user's phone which in turn sends it to the wheelchair and the command is finally executed.

This method is found to be three times faster than the traditional sip and puff method.  Not only can it be used to just maneuver a wheelchair, but to play video games and use computers or phones too. 11 volunteers helped with the testing and it was found that their performance significantly improved between training session one and two, suggesting how easy it is to use.

The idea behind the study was not just to see how accurate and fast TDS (Tongue Driving System) is but also to prove to insurance companies that tongue control is indeed useful.

The next step in this research is to enhance the TDS by getting rid of the headset.

Watch this video to learn more about what professor Ghovanloo has to say about TDS.

Go here if you are interested in reading the published paper.

Source: The Verge

Image sources: Examiner, Georgia Tech Research News

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Tongue Interface Using Kinect

Researchers at The University of Electro Communications are busy developing an interface that detects tongue movements and allows users to access items using their tongues. This interface is being designed for people who have difficulty speaking and swallowing (stroke victims, for example).

The interface uses the Kinect and works by first detecting the location of the two eyes. Once it has located the eyes, it estimates the location of the tip of the nose. Once that is done, it estimates the location of the mouth area, and based on that, the actual movement of the tongue is obtained.

This interface could be efficiently used if the user could train their tongue. One way to do so is to move the tongue left and right. The researchers have actually created a game that uses the left to right tongue movement.

The interface is still a work in progress  - quite raw and not very robust. The researchers are working on improving the interface's ability to detect tongue movements more precisely. Also, they plan to include detection of lip movements in the future along with tongue movements. However, this is another fine example of what technology and innovation can do to make lives better for everyone.

Watch the video to see this interface (and the game) in action.




Source: DigInfo via Engadget

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