08 December 2013

Tongue Navigation System

Researchers proposed a wearable system that allows paralyzed people to navigate their worlds with just flicks of their pierced tongues. The technology, still under development, could help patients disabled from the neck down access their worlds with far greater ease and access than current assistive systems offer – and with a tongue piercing, to boot. The Tongue Drive System (TDS) works like this: a magnetic tongue stud relays the wearer’s tongue movements to a headset, which then sends the commands to a smartphone or another WiFi-connected device. The user can control almost anything that a smartphone can – and a smartphone can do a lot, including drive a wheelchair, surf the web, and adjust the thermostat.


TDS is just one of a new crop of innovative assistive technologies for paralyzed patients, along with equipment that tracks eye movements, responds to voice commands, or follows neck movements. Still, these systems have distinct limitations: the neck can tire from prolonged use, background noise muddles voice commands, and eye-tracking headsets are cumbersome. Electrodes implanted in the brain have produced some good results, but they require brain surgery. In their lab tests, researchers compared TDS to one popular assistive system known as sip-and-puff. Users of that system sip or puff air into a straw connected to their wheelchair. The airflow relays commands that move the chair either forward or backward, or to either side.

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