Tongue Computing

Maysam Ghovanloo of Georgia Tech and colleagues are working on a new type of "keyboard" for the disabled: the human tongue!

Georgia Tech researchers believe a magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person's mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard -- and tongue into the key that manipulates it all.

"You could have full control over your environment by just being able to move your tongue," said Maysam Ghovanloo, a Georgia Tech assistant professor who leads the team's research.

The group's Tongue Drive System turns the tongue into a joystick of sorts, allowing the disabled to manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers. The work still has a ways to go -- one potential user called the design "grotesque" -- but early tests are encouraging.

The system is far from the first that seeks a new way to control electronics through facial movements. But disabled advocates have particularly high hopes that the tongue could prove the most effective.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/08/25/tongue.computing.ap/index.html


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A scientist for NASA, named David Brin, wrote a book called "Earth" in, I believe 1988, that detailed something like this pretty accurately. Basically, all the people in the story just tap into the internet and run these crazy like free energy-mind "search engines". Like image having a laptop the size of a blue tooth with a retractable screen to view any little thing your mind can dream up.
I highly recommend this book to all Neatorama readers as the whole book is about NASA creating fields of science that create, and manipulate black holes.
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that is fantastic. i used to be an educational aide for a boy with severe CP, and they tried to use an eye movement controlled computer with him, but he couldn't hold his head still enough for it to work for him. he was very bright but had almost no means of communication; i think if this had been available it could have shaped his life.
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