Quadriplegics face an even more difficult challenge of getting around in a wheelchair: by controlling the wheelchair by sucking or blowing air through a straw. But this new powered wheelchair from the Georgia Institute of Technology responds to a flick of the user's tongue.

The functionality of the existing sip-n-puff control system is limited to only four basic commands. Instead, the Tongue Drive system uses a magnetic tongue stud to issue one of six directives based on the mouth muscle's relative position to an external headset: slide your tongue forward to go forward, slide it back to reverse, and so on. The headset wirelessly transmits that information to the user's smartphone where an associated app issues the command to move the wheelchair or computer cursor.

Developed by professor Anne Laumann, the wheelchair was tested on 11 quadriplegic participants at a clinical trial at Northwestern University. They were able to perform various tasks, on average, three times faster than with a sip-n-puff with the same level of accuracy that took years of daily use to develop with the previous method.

The system is still going through clinic trials, but hopefully soon it will be able to improve the quality of life for paralyzed people in the near future.


[TheDM]