通过舌头来操纵轮椅

‘Tongue computing’ could help disabled

　　By Dury Crewe

　　美国科学家研发出一种新技术，令坐轮椅者通过舌头，操纵轮椅。这无疑将大大节省残疾人的力气，使轮椅变得更加灵活。

　　The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.

　　Georgia Tech researchers believe a magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person’s mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard — and tongue into the key that manipulates it all.

　　“You could have full control over your environment by just being able to move your tongue,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, a Georgia Tech assistant professor who leads the team’s research.

　　The group’s Tongue Drive System turns the tongue into a joystick of sorts, allowing the disabled to manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers. “This could give you an almost infinite number of switches and options for communication,” said Mike Jones, a vice president of research and technology at the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta rehabilitation hospital. “It’s easy, and somebody could learn an entirely different language.”

　　That’s quite a contrast to the handful of methods already available to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are disabled from the neck down.

　　The “sip and puff” technique, which lets people issue commands by inhaling and exhaling into a tube, is among the most popular. But it offers users only four different commands, limiting their options.

　Control systems that use sophisticated pads to measure neck and head movements are also widespread, but using the hardware can be tiring, and frustrating on smaller electronics like computers.

　　And while newer innovations that track eye movement are promising, they can be costly, slow and susceptible to mixed signals.

　　The tongue, though, is a more flexible, sensitive and tireless option. And like other facial muscles, its functions tend to be spared in accidents that can paralyze most of the rest of the body, because the tongue is attached to the brain, not the spinal cord.

　　The magnet’s movement is tracked by sensors on the side of each cheek, which sends data to a receiver atop a rather bulky set of headgear. It is then processed by software that converts the movement into commands for a wheelchair or other electronics.

　　After turning the system on, users are asked to establish six commands: Left, right, forward, backward, single-click and double-click. A graduate student who tested the technology was cruising the lab at will in a wheelchair, tongue firmly in cheek.

　　It’s an impressive display, and Ghovanloo said he hopes he could one day add dozens more commands that turn teeth into keyboards and cheeks into computer consoles. For example, “Left-up could be turning lights on, right-down could be turning off the TV,” Ghovanloo said.

　　The design certainly needs improvements. “It’s in its infancy and quite grotesque,” he said. But Cochran said its potential for almost limitless control options makes him want to shelve his “sip and puff” wheelchair.

　　“You could control not just your chair, your TV, your computer, but your entire life,” he said. “And it’s all one system.”