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
Comments (2)
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.
I agree with Falko. You are ASSUMING the glass is halfway filled with WATER. You could just as easily assume the glass is half full of apple juice or dirt. I've never heard the saying specify WHAT the glass is half full or empty OF.
lol. :)
Of course, being a scientist myself, I have always been worried with the flaw in an otherwise beautiful and unexpected answer. For a while I almost changed my stock answer to "It's less than 1 percent full, actually about a billion times less. But I love the "all full" answer so much better.
I did appreciate Gupta's "twice the size it needs to be" comment...
Nevertheless, the glass *is* half full of water the second most important substance of our lives. How is it that so many people forget the glass is also half full of air - *the* most important substance in our lives!!!!
Apparently normal people fail at having a sense of humor.
When the glass was created, it was empty.
Therefore, the glass is now half full.