Body-machine interface for control of a screen cursor for a child with congenital absence of upper and lower limbs: a ca
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RESEARCH
Open Access
Body-machine interface for control of a screen cursor for a child with congenital absence of upper and lower limbs: a case report Mei-Hua Lee1*, Rajiv Ranganathan1,2, Florian A. Kagerer1 and Ranjan Mukherjee2
Abstract Background: There has been a recent interest in the development of body-machine interfaces which allow individuals with motor impairments to control assistive devices using body movements. Methods: In this case study, we report findings in the context of the development of such an interface for a 10-year old child with congenital absence of upper and lower limbs. The interface consisted of 4 wireless inertial measurement units (IMUs), which we used to map movements of the upper body to the position of a cursor on a screen. We examined the learning of a task in which the child had to move the cursor to specified targets on the screen as quickly as possible. In addition, we also determined the robustness of the interface by evaluating the child’s performance in two different body postures. Results: We found that the child was not only able to learn the task rapidly, but also showed superior performance when compared to typically developing children in the same age range. Moreover, task performance was comparable for the two different body postures, suggesting that the child was able to control the device in different postures without the need for interface recalibration. Conclusions: These results clearly establish the viability and robustness of the proposed non-invasive body-machine interface for pediatric populations with severe motor limitations.
Background Assistive devices facilitate interaction with both the physical world (for example using prosthetic limbs, powered wheelchairs), as well as the virtual world (for example using a pointing device to type or browse the web), and play a critical role in maintaining independence in activities of daily living (ADLs) for people with movement impairments. Although assistive devices typically have their own control interface (e.g., a joystick for a wheelchair, switches for a prosthetic arm), there is a need for designing a general-purpose human-machine interface that can ‘plug into’ a variety of devices, especially for people with severe impairments who may not be able to use device-specific controllers. In this context, * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Kinesiology, Michigan State University, 308 W Circle Dr Rm 201, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
there has been tremendous progress in the area of brain-machine interfaces where signals are recorded from the brain (either invasively or non-invasively) in order to control external devices [10, 18, 29]. However, it is important to recognize that there are significant disadvantages with both invasive and non-invasive brainmachine interfaces - invasive brain-machine interfaces involve surgical risks and system durability issues [24], whereas non-invasive interfaces involve low signal-tonoise ratios and s
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