Passive wireless tags for tongue controlled assistive technology interfaces

Abstract

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.

Small Epidermal UHF RFID Loop Antenna for Passive Oral Cavity Control Applications and Patient Health Monitoring

“…A prototype targeted at the European RFID band was simulated and measured. This gave promising performance and compares well in terms of read range from previously published work [2], particularly considering, not only the challenges of epidermal mounted antennas but also the RF hostile environment of the oral cavity. In this instance a single loop has been evaluated for RF performance with a conventional asset tag type RFID device but work is ongoing not only to add functionality with some of the sensor type RFID devices but at the same time improve RF performance.…”

“…This paper discusses basic STL operation and demonstrates by simulation and measurement a UHF RFID based STL placed upon the hard palate of the mouth. This oral placement would find applications for tongue controlled assistive technologies or patient health monitoring applications [2][3]. It is noted that, although these are compact antenna types they are for operation in the far-field, providing greater read ranges than the few centimetres a near-field system typically offers.…”

Palatal Electrotactile Display Outperforms Visual Display in Tongue Motor Learning

“…It may also cause speech issues with unclear pronunciation like slurring and stuttering [ 6 ] and respiration issues like obstructive sleep apnea [7]. Also, limited tongue control capability leads to challenges in issuing user-defined tongue commands of assistive technologies (ATs) for people with quadriplegia [8], [9], [10], [11]. As the commands are mostly defined by special tongue maneuver to avoid the MIDAS touch problem and the confusion with the daily oral activities [12], these new tongue trajectories require a lot of training.…”

Design and evaluation of an alternative wheelchair control system for dexterity disabilities

“…Limited research has been carried out on tongue controlled wheelchairs. In [6], the authors use radio frequency identification tags mounted in the mouth and controlled by the tongue. The authors of [7,8] use electroencephalogram signals from the brain connected via electrodes to control a prototype wheelchair.…”