Transportation at the Tip of your Tongue

posted on Mar 19 by Brian in the Disability News, Spinal Cord Injury, Technology, Wheelchair Technology category

Transportation at the tip of your tongue

Tongue Controlled Wheelchair Studied at Georgia Institute of Technology
A Science Daily article printed the first week of July has the wheelchair worlds a buzz with a chair that can be controlled by a tongue.

The Shepherd Center, located in Atlanta, Georgia, is hosting a clinical trial of the Tongue Drive System that allows individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries to use their tongue to not only control a wheelchair, but play video games as well.

Results of the trial were releases at the annual Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) on June 26. The trial tested the abilities of individuals to perform tasks using only their tongue. According to the article, a magnet the size of a grain of rice was placed on the participant’s tongue to act as a sensor. Maysam Ghovanloo, a professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, chose the tongue because it is directly connected to the brain and often escaped damage in severe spinal cord injuries.

The article goes on to explain how each user’s computer was trained to understand each tongue movement. Researchers say the trial only used six commands but that it could continue to grow to handle as many different commands that an individual can remember. What makes this different from the sip-n-puff wheelchair device is that instead of users having to blow through a straw they simply wear headphones, as if they were listening to music, and make a slight movement of their tongue. Ghovanloo says users prefer this to the visible sign of a straw.

About Shepherd Center

Shepherd Center is a private, not-for-profit hospital devoted to the medical care and rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injury and disease, acquired brain injury, multiple sclerosis and other neuromuscular problems.

References:
Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706112906.htm