Interfaces for tetraplegic people – review of solutions supporting activities of daily living
-
Piotr Augustyniak
and
Zbigniew Mikrut
Abstract
Currently, a disabled person can participate in social life and proceed with independent individual development with the assistance of intelligent support from modern technology. This paper reviews various approaches and recent achievements in designing and prototyping of interfaces for tetraplegic people originating from Biocybernetics Laboratory AGH. After a short review of other available systems, three categories of activities of daily living (ADL)-supporting solutions are presented: input devices, control software, and stand-alone systems. As a result of testing other alternatives such as touchpad, tongue presspad, eye tracker, blow sensor, and direct sensor of brain electrical activity, joysticks were selected as preferable input devices. They are free from hygienic issues, tolerant to involuntary use or excessive force, and easily operable by using the chin or lips. The operational flexibility required for personalization of input devices is achieved with dedicated software defining the rules of interpretation of operators’ motions. To adapt the final signal to the specificity of a supported human, the interpretation process takes into account the identification of gesture, its duration, and coincidence. The paper also presents two stand-alone systems dedicated to supporting the selected ADL. One of them is a smart interface for infrared-based remote control of home appliances, and the second is a joystick-based emulator of a computer mouse. Both devices provide a learning mode that allows for adaptation to the particular environment (i.e. set of devices to be controlled) and specific abilities of their human operator.
Acknowledgments
This scientific work was funded by AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, under grant no. 11.11.120.612. The authors express their gratitude to Dr. Krzysztof Grandys, MD, for the inspiration for our research and for the care over the disabled volunteers. Special thanks also go to one of the participants, Wojciech Wątor, for testing the joysticks and the software, as well as for the administration of the project’s website.
Authors’ contribution: Both authors accept responsibility for the entire content of the submitted manuscript and its approved submission.
Employment or leadership: None declared.
Honorarium: None declared.
References
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©2015 by De Gruyter
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- Interfaces for tetraplegic people – review of solutions supporting activities of daily living
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Reviews
- From Hippocrates to statistics. A historical perspective
- Neural networks as a tool for modeling of biological systems
- Original Articles
- Phylogenetic aspects of the concept of intelligent life design
- A method of predicting the secondary protein structure based on dictionaries
- Application of divergence entropy to characterize the structure of lipid-binding proteins
- Hydrophobic core structure of macromomycin – the apoprotein of the antitumor antibiotic auromomycin – fuzzy oil drop model applied
- Interfaces for tetraplegic people – review of solutions supporting activities of daily living
- Erratum
- Erratum to: Building an audio/video-feedback system for simulation training in medical education
