EYE MOVEMENT CONTROLLED PERIPHERALS FOR THE HANDICAPPED-PARALYZED PEOPLE AND ALS PATIENTS

Year 2017, Volume: 18 Issue: 4, 763 - 776, 31.10.2017

İ. Baran Uslu Fikret Arı Emre Sümer Mustafa Türker

https://doi.org/10.18038/aubtda.340796

Abstract

Controlling some devices in
their daily life for the handicapped-paralyzed people and ALS (Amyotrophic
Lateral Sclerosis) patients is an important challenge. In this study, a
wearable system, called SmartEyes, is developed. The system is controlled by
the eye movements of the user. With the help of this system, two groups of
facilities are provided. The first is: communicating with predefined voiced
messages, valuable especially for people who are unable to talk, and the second
is: controlling some peripherals which are in the range around the user. The novelty
of the developed system is that it navigates among the menus by means of the
eye movements with the help of synthesized voice messages and without a need to
sit across a monitor. In the control part, both the infrared (IR) and radio
frequency (RF) wireless technologies were employed. The details of the
peripheral control operations, namely: controlling the desk light, rolling
curtain, TV, air conditioner and the sickbed, are explained in detail. The test
results show that the system works quite satisfactorily in tracing and
implementing the commands given by the user’s pupil gaze directions. We found that the overall
satisfaction is quite high by yielding a total average survey score of 4.7 out
of 5. We
believe that the developed system offers a practical and efficient solution for
making the lives of handicapped-paralyzed people and ALS patients easier. We
carry on improving the skills of our SmartEyes system.

Keywords

Handicapped-paralyzed people, ALS patients, pupil gaze direction, wireless hardware control

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