Playing with your mind

A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a communication system between the brainand a machine like a computer. Some BCI systems have been used to help people withdisabilities and sometimes, with entertainment purposes. In this paper, a BCI-game system is developed. It allows controlling the altitude of a ball inside of a glass pipe according to mental concentration level, which is measured on EEG signals of the user. The system is automatically adjusted to each user, hence, it is not needed any calibration step. Ten subjects participated in the experiments. They achieved effective control of the ball in a few minutes, demonstratingthe feasibility of the BCI-game system.Fil: Rodriguez, Mauro. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electrónica y Automática. Gabinete de Tecnología Médica; ArgentinaFil: Gimenez, Ramiro. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electrónica y Automática. Gabinete de Tecnología Médica; ArgentinaFil: Diez, Pablo Federico. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electrónica y Automática. Gabinete de Tecnología Médica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Avila Perona, Enrique Mario. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electrónica y Automática. Gabinete de Tecnología Médica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Laciar Leber, Eric. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electrónica y Automática. Gabinete de Tecnología Médica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Orosco, Lorena Liliana. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electrónica y Automática. Gabinete de Tecnología Médica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Garces, Agustina. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electrónica y Automática. Gabinete de Tecnología Médica; Argentin

Arianna: towards a new paradigm for assistive technology at home

Providing elderly and people with special needs to retain their independence as long as possible is one of the biggest challenges of the society of tomorrow. Teseo, a startup company spinoff from the University of Genoa, aims at accelerating the transition towards a sustainable healthcare system. Teseo's first concept and product, Arianna, allows for the automated recognition of activities of daily living at home and acts as a wellbeing and healthcare personalized assistant. This abstract outlines the main concepts underlying its features and capabilities.Comment: Paper accepted at the Eight Italian Forum on Ambient Assisted Living (ForItAAL 2017

AI in Assisting the Elderly and People with Disabilities

The focus of this research is to magnify those technologies that have been developed and that need more modification in their make. We will disclose some machines that have a great impact on the lives elderly and people with disabilities. As we know that artificial intelligence has advanced our life and now we can take advantage of it by using machines though that is related to defense or related to our daily life goods buying robots. These machines are not very common to everybody but we need to do it as these assist more than a human being to elder or disable persons. We also need to invest in these kinds of projects that can be fruitful to human beings. As it is clear that there is no sufficient human resources exist that can assist the elderly and people with disabilities. So ICTs are expected to play its part in assisting those people. In this age, 3D printers making better and better prosthetic for those in need. In the future we will reach a level that will make regular body parts inferior and before we know it the cyborg age will be upon us by this 3D technology. Also in the labs around the world bioengineering have begun to print prototype body parts like ears, noses, artificial bones and skin, even an entire face

Ultrasonic Blind Stick for Completely Blind People to Avoid any Kind of Obstacles

The ability to live without being controlled by any action, judgment and any outside factors including any opinions and regulations is defined by the term Independent. But in reality physical movement for travelling or simply walking through a crowded street pose great challenge for a visually impaired person. Also they must learn every detail about the home environment such as placement of tables; chairs etc. to prevent injury. Because of this disability they have to sacrifice their independence in daily living by depending on the sighted people in every busy place like bus, footpaths, railway stations etc. This paper aims to design an artificial navigating system with adjustable sensitivity with the help of ultrasonic proximity sensor to assist these blind persons to walk fearlessly and independently in both indoor and outdoor environment. This system can detect any type of upcoming obstacles and potholes using the reflection properties of ultrasound. Attachment of the system to different body areas makes its utilization more versatile and reliable

Development of an externally powered prosthetic hook for amputees

The powered hook with trigger finger appears to be a useful adaptation of a terminal device for an amputee when performing vocational activities involving the use of a powered tool requiring a trigger control. The proportional control system includes transducers and amplifiers and appears to have widespread application for control of any external power, whether it be in the orthotic or prosthetic field

Kinect as an access device for people with cerebral palsy: A preliminary study

Cerebral palsy (CP) describes a group of disorders affecting the development of movement and posture, causingactivity limitation. Access to technology can alleviate some of these limitations. Many studies have used vision- based movement capture systems to overcome problems related to discomfort and fear of wearing devices. Incontrast, there has been no research assessing the behavior of vision-based movement capture systems in peoplewith involuntary movements. In this paper, we look at the potential of the Kinect sensor as an assistive technologyfor people with cerebral palsy. We developed a serious game, called KiSens Números, to study the behavior ofKinect in this context and eighteen subjects with cerebral palsy used it to complete a set of sessions. The resultsof the experiments show that Kinect filters some of peoples involuntary movements, confirming the potential ofKinect as an assistive technology for people with motor disabilities

The Annotation Game: On Turing (1950) on Computing, Machinery, and Intelligence

This quote/commented critique of Turing's classical paper suggests that Turing meant -- or should have meant -- the robotic version of the Turing Test (and not just the email version). Moreover, any dynamic system (that we design and understand) can be a candidate, not just a computational one. Turing also dismisses the other-minds problem and the mind/body problem too quickly. They are at the heart of both the problem he is addressing and the solution he is proposing

Awareness, requirements and barriers to use of Assistive Technology designed to enable independence of people suffering from Dementia (ATD)

This article is available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. Copyright @ 2012 IOS PressThis study investigated the awareness and use of assistive technology for people with dementia. The aim of the study was to explore barriers to the uptake of, and the unmet needs for, assistive technology for dementia (ATD) The work was carried out with family carers of people with dementia because carers are often the purchasers, end users and main beneficiaries of this type of technology. Focus groups were used to explore carers’ views on ATD use, and the problems that might be addressed by ATD, in order to develop a questionnaire for dementia carers. The questionnaire was administered at Alzheimer’s Society carer support groups in South Bucks and in Hillingdon Borough (UK). None of the 16 focus group participants or the 42 respondents to the questionnaire had any personal experience of ATD. The dementia carers reported a number of concerns, problems and unmet needs that could be addressed by existing, commercially available ATD products. Some needs for new technology development were identified in the study, but the lack of awareness of ATD appears to be the most important barrier to technology adoption