Wheelchair Powered By Tongue Piercing?!

posted on Dec 08 by Stacy in the Disability News, Spinal Cord Injury, Technology, Wheelchair Technology category

Over a quarter of a million American live with a spinal cord injury, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center. When the injury limits mobility so that the person has to use a wheelchair to get around, they have two basic choices – a manual one which must be propelled by either the user or a caretaker. While generally lightweight, they do require physical strength to propel them if the user is moving him or herself.

Power wheelchairs, on the other hand, are battery powered so the user doesn’t need as much strength to operate them, and can control them with a joystick.

But tetraplegics and those who can’t use their hands can’t use the controls to operate a standard power wheelchair. One alternate method is a system which employs a straw, through which a user sucks or blows air; the direction and strength of the airflow is sent to a sensor in a computer, which turns the actions into movement of the chair. This technique is easy to learn, but slow and cumbersome. And it’s obviously of no use to patients who are on a ventilator.

Another new alternative, currently under development at Georgia Technical Institute of Technology, uses the Tongue Drive System. A magnet is attached to the end of the user’s tongue, who then moves it in specific directions. Those directions are picked up by a sensor on an external headset the patient wears, which translates this information into programs to move the wheelchair.

This system is currently in its initial testing at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, where researchers discovered that patients found the system easy to learn and use, and could even navigate an obstacle course in their wheelchairs. While still in development and testing, Engineering Researcher Maysam Ghovanloo imagines the magnet will be part of a tongue piercing and the sensors incorporated into a retainer-like device. This would keep the entire system invisible as the user operates it. Ghovanloo sees this system as being particularly useful to spinal cord damage patients because the nerve controlling tongue movement is rarely damaged and the tongue itself isn’t subject to the same fatigue as other muscles because of its strength.

If you have always wanted a tongue piercing, now you may have an excuse!