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Tongue control with low profile, passive mouth tags is demonstrated as a human-device interface by communicating values of tongue-tag separation over a wireless link. Confusion matrices are provided to demonstrate user accuracy in targeting by tongue position. Accuracy is found to increase dramatically after short training sequences with errors falling close to 1% in magnitude with zero missed targets. The rate at which users are able to learn accurate targeting with high accuracy indicates that this is an intuitive device to operate. The significance of the work is that innovative very unobtrusive, wireless tags can be used to provide intuitive human-computer interfaces based on low cost and disposable mouth mounted technology. With the development of an appropriate reading system, control of assistive devices such as computer mice or wheelchairs could be possible for tetraplegics and others who retain fine motor control capability of their tongues. The tags contain no battery and are intended to fit directly on the hard palate, detecting tongue position in the mouth with no need for tongue piercings.

This is an accepted pre-published version of this paper.Abstract-This paper illustrates the concept of passive tongue touch and tongue proximity wireless sensors. The sensors use the principle of changing the capacitive loading of the tag feed network by moving the tongue closer to the sensor. The application of these devices could be as control actuators for people with severe physical disability.

-UHF RFID technology is presented that can facilitate new passive assistive technologies. Tongue control for human computer interfaces is first discussed where a tag is attached to the hard palate of the mouth and the tag turn-on power is observed to vary in response to tongue proximity. Secondly, a stretchable tag is fabricated from Lycra fabric that contains conducting silver fibres. The application of strain to the elastic tag again causes the required power at the reader to activate the tag to vary in proportion.This elastic tag is proposed as a temporary skin mounted strain gauge that could detect muscle twitch in the face or neck of an otherwise physically incapacitated person. Either design might be applied to the steering function of a powered wheelchair, or to facilitate the control of a computer mouse. Better than 3dB isolation is achieved in the tongue switching case and approximately 0.25dBm per percentage stretch is observed for the strain gauge.

No abstract