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Gone are the days of only being able to drive a wheelchair independently using Sip ‘n Puff driving controls for high-level quadriplegics. These controls were invented decades ago and allow quadriplegics to a control wheelchair using their breath, but it wasn’t the perfect system.
Just like all adapted tools, how to setup a driving system for high-level quadriplegics was always a work in progress, and in the last five years there have been some awesome improvements. Using one’s breath, one’s head or having a working hand are no longer the sole options. Driving controls have expanded to be used by other body parts – eyes, tongue and the mind.
You may even want to try them yourself even if you can use your hands; that’s how cool these are. Check out three of our new favorite driving methods below!
Video #1: Eyes, Facial Expressions and Voice Become Controllers
Our first video shows just how far scientists have come in the world of actuators and sensors in helping wheelchair-users drive their own wheelchairs with their eyes. Scientists at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute are working hard on a “smart wheelchair,” and they’ve developed some pretty awesome stuff.
How this chair works is a bit tricky to explain, but it’s all based on highly-sensitive sensors that are placed around the wheelchair, sensing walls and staying away from them automatically, and driving based on your facial expressions. Looking to the right or left will turn the chair.
And if you can use your voice, you can drive your wheelchair using your voice too. Scientists have integrated Google Glass into their adapted controllers, allowing voice commands to drive wheelchairs. Simply say “Go forward” and it will go, and they hope it will be able to read more advanced commands, such as “Go to kitchen,” in the near future.
Video #2: Barbell Tongue Piercing to Drive Your Way
Our second video is perfect for the quad with a penchant for piercings, as this method takes advantage of a tongue piercing in a brilliant way. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have figured out a way to allow high-quads to drive their wheelchairs by activating a barbell tongue piercing in their mouths, making the need of one’s arms to drive a chair (or their breath) completely obsolete.
And how it works is crazy awesome. First, a barbell-shaped titanium device with a high-powered magnet is put in the mouth, and the wearer must also use a headset for the tongue piercing to be read by the wheelchair. The headset is connected to an iPod with an app that can turn tongue movements into wheelchair movements. Called the TDS, for Tongue Driving System, this driving system is quicker than most Sip ‘n Puff controllers.
Watch: The Tongue Drive System created by the Georgia Institute of Technology
Video #3: UC-Berkeley Students Tap Into Brainwaves
A quick Google search will reveal the exciting fact that colleges and universities around the world are working on creating mind-controlled wheelchairs. Since about five years ago they’ve begun to be made in earnest; mainly because the technology that finally makes this a reality is affordable.
All that’s needed is a standard power wheelchair, a computer and electrodes for reading the wearer’s brain waves. In this project by students at UC Berkeley, they developed a EEG “neuro controller” wheelchair using a Jazzy wheelchair as its base. By creating specific code, they’ve made it possible for brainwaves to actually be read, and it’s something to watch.
Watch: Brainwave-controlled Jazzy wheelchair project
I don’t know about you, but after 20 years of using a joystick with my right hand, these new driving methods are quite attractive. While they’re intended for high-quadriplegics, imagine all the things they would allow us to do.
Holding coffee in one hand and talking on your phone in the other hand, and while moving forward. Now this would give me a perma-grin. I’ll go with the tongue piercing. I like my hair too much to wear an electrode cap all day.
What activity would you love an eye/tongue/brainwave-powered wheelchair for?
Watch the videos!
– The Boston Globe profiles an eye-controlled chair by Polytechnic Institute
– Tongue piercing allows quadriplegics superior wheelchair control
– Mind-controlled wheelchair created at UC-Berkeley
ideas@spinalpedia.com
