[plug] [Slightly-OT] Computer for Paralysed

[Chris Caston]

On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 13:38, Denis Brown wrote:
> At 12:40 PM 15/09/2005, you wrote:
> >On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 11:06 +0800, Jonathan Young wrote:
> > > I guess some ideas to look at would be voice control, tablet PCs /
> > > laptops, touch-screens (though he would need to use his mouth to hold
> 
> Many years ago there was a group of people operating out of a university in 
> South Australia, a project called "cyclops" IIRC.   It was featured on the 
> ABC inventor show (Towards 2000???) at the time.   My group at UWA got to 
> see a demo of it but we did nothing further and the details are somewhat 
> fuzzy in my mind.   I will describe it here in case others recall it better 
> than I, and may have more recent information on it or something similar.
> 
> What they did was, using an infrared energy source, illuminate the 
> subject's face and with two cameras focussed on the eyes, and some software 
> smarts, worked out where the subject was fixating his/her gaze.  The "gaze 
> target" was a monitor, displaying variously a "keyboard" layout for 
> composing text, a "home control centre" layout for turning on/off lights, 
> etc and so on.
> 
> By fixating for long enough (typically two seconds) on any "letter", that 
> character would be added to a string being built at the bottom of the 
> monitor.   IIRC all the normal punctuation keys were present but I fail to 
> recall how "shift" functions were implemented.
> 
> Given today's computing power, the much higher resolution in cameras, etc 
> this should continue to be a viable project.   Basically, all the subject 
> had to be able to do was move their eyes!   I assumed the role of subject 
> for a couple of sessions and found it highly viable as a 
> communication/command tool.
> 
> Maybe this will help???
> Denis


Yes but how about we try and build him a robotic exo-skeleton?
That would be even better.
> 
> 
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