Oral device could give spinal patients more independence
An assistive technology designed to give people with severe spinal injuries greater independence has undergone modifications that make it less conspicuous and more capable.
The Tongue Drive System is a wireless device that enables people with high-level spinal-cord injuries to operate a computer and manoeuvre an electrically powered wheelchair simply by moving their tongues.
The newest prototype allows users to wear an inconspicuous dental retainer embedded with sensors to control the system.
The sensors track the location of a tiny magnet attached to the tongues of users. In earlier versions of the Tongue Drive System, the sensors that track the movement of the magnet on the tongue were mounted on a headset worn by the user.
‘By moving the sensors inside the mouth, we have created a tongue drive system with increased mechanical stability and comfort that is nearly unnoticeable,’ said Maysam Ghovanloo, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The new intra-oral Tongue Drive System was presented and demonstrated on 20 February 2012 at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.
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