Biometric Devices: When All Else Fails, Nose Goes
A revolutionary technology coming out of Israel is giving a paralyzed patient the ability to communicate, surf the web, and drive a wheelchair using not her hand, her mouth, or even her eyes, but her nose. The Discover Magazine blog just posted an article about a sniff-detector that allows paralyzed people to accomplish these all tasks when everything else has failed.
In Israel, a patient known as LI1 is suffering from “locked-in syndrome,” an affliction where the patient is completely aware but unable to move or speak. She cannot control the blinks of her eyes, which, if you you’ve seen some of our previous articles, is method of controlling new assistive technology incorporating eye tracking.
Still, LI1 has been able to answer questions from doctors and communicate with her family through written messages. She uses a ‘sniff controller’, a new technology that allows paralyzed patients to control machines with their nose. Anton Plotkin and Lee Sala of the Weizmann Institute of Science created the device, which is activated when a patient sniffs. The device measures the change in pressure inside their nose and converts it to an electrical signal that is then passed to a computer using a simple USB connection. With only a sniff, a patient can maneuver across a screen and write messages. The device comes in handy for quadriplegics,
allowing them to surf the web or drive a wheelchair.
The technology was apparently developed almost by accident in the lab of Noam Sobol, a scientist who studies brains and sense of smell. The group was using an olfactometer, a device that produces waves of smell to see how sensitive a person’s senses are. When the team rigged an olfactometer for volunteers to trigger the odor pulse themselves when they sniffed, they noticed that sniffs made for a good, fast trigger. It dawned on them that instead of triggering odor, they could trigger anything – letters in a text writer or the turns of a wheelchair, for example.
As a result of a happy accident in the lab, LI1 is now able to control her environment to an extent, offering a line out of her locked-in syndrome. As people have quite a tight control over the length, intensity, pattern, and direction of their sniff, it’s proven to be quite a useful center to base communication on, providing subtle differences that can be used to control various commands.
To read more about this promising device, have a look at the link below:
Sniff-detector allows paralysed people to write messages, surf the net and drive a wheelchair
Related articles:
- Biometric Devices: First Eye Control and Now Sniff Control
- Biometric Devices: Jaw Movement to Control a Wheelchair
- New Biometric Devices in Hospitals
- Biometric Devices: Skin Based Touch Interface
- Biometric Devices: The Story Behind Stephen Hawking’s Voice
- Biometric Devices: Using Your Mind To Control The Screen
- Biometric Devices: The Future of Microsoft’s Kinect and Gesture Tracking
- Biometric Devices: Ear Scanning, An Alternative in Airport Security