How Technology Could Help the Disabled [Slideshow]

For disabled people, technology may do more than just improve their lives - high-tech tools may give them life back.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology created the latest device, a mouth retainer that allows people with spinal cord injuries to operate a computer and move an electric wheelchair with only their tongues.

But that's not the only one. Here are a few of the many devices that researchers hope will someday be able to help the disabled.

Engineers embedded the circuitry for this system in a retainer worn in the mouth. Sensors in the retainer act as mouse buttons or wheelchair controls and respond to the movement of the user’s tongue, which has a magnet embedded in it. This movement is then transmitted to an iPod or iPhone which uses software to either move a cursor on a computer screen or move an electric wheelchair.
Older systems required the user to wear a headset instead of a retainer and were vulnerable to shifting. If the device shifted, it would need to be recalibrated before it could be used again, giving the Tongue Drive System a distinct advantage.
The system still has to go through clinical trials before it is available to the public.

While not as accurate as some other models, the EyeBoard, designed by 18-year-old Honduran high school student Luis Cruz, is a fraction of the price of other eye tracking devices at only $300 per pair. Other models cost upwards of $10,000.

Electrodes built into a pair of glasses allow users to select letters on a screen just by looking at them. It works by tracking a user’s eye movements across a keyboard and pasting letters into a virtual notepad. Users simply look at the letters they want and write a sentence.

The EyeBoard is available for purchase as a DIY kit from his website, http://www.intelsath.com/eyeboard.php.

Wheelchairs controlled by the “sip and puff” method – inhales and exhales from the mouth – have existed for decades. Unfortunately many paraplegics and other paralyzed people are unable to use the muscles required to operate a sip and puff wheelchair.

Sniffing however is controlled by the soft palate, located in the back of the roof of the mouth, and is usually unaffected by paralytic injuries and disorders.

Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel created a method of moving wheelchairs and controlling a cursor using this method and found it very effective.

The wheelchair would react to different commands depending on how hard and long a user blew. Paraplegics were able to navigate a wheelchair along a 115-foot (35-meter) obstacle course using this method and were also able to highlight and select text to write sentences as well.

No word on when this device will be available.

Created by Toyota, this wheelchair responds to your thoughts. Users simply think about moving the wheelchair and it happens in 125-thousandths of a second. Older technology took several seconds to respond.

Users wear a cap that can read brain signals. Those signals are then relayed to a brain scan electroencephalograph (EEG) on the wheelchair which are then analyzed by a computer program and sent to the wheelchair. Toyota said its next goal is to allow users to think about letters in order to spell words.

No word on when it will be available.