Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have built a system that turns a human tongue into a joystick or computer mouse, so that disabled users can control their wheelchairs or computer desktops with their mouths.
The researchers, led by Maysam Ghovanloo, an assistant professor in the institute’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have already built a prototype that uses the tongue-control system to manipulate an electric wheelchair. And the system is cheaper than those that track eye movements to control machines — another approach under development.
(Photograph by Gary Meek, Courtesy of Georgia Tech)
The system gives users far more control than the popular “sip and puff” technique in which people issue commands to computers by breathing into a tube, according to a report in the Associated Press. —Jeffrey R. Young
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