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Mouth-based touchpad enables people living with paralysis to use computers
- xnx 2y agoAssistive technology for the disabled is the higher use for mouth-input, but it'd be great to have a simple bluetooth mouthguard with media playback controls (play, pause, next previous) for action sports.
- sa-code 2y agoCould you provide some examples of this?
- xnx 2y agoWhile snowboarding or skiing, it is difficult to control music playback because bulky gloves are being worn. Cycling might be another sport where you want to control music without taking your hands off the handlebars. A single button (like tapping an earbud) that could be gently bit down on could control song playback. Prior art for this type of device would be something like this: https://www.airturn.com/products/airturn-bite-switch-remote-controller https://www.airturn.com/products/airturn-bite-switch-remote-...
- rqtwteye 2y agoIt's very strange to me to listen to music while snowboarding or cycling. Especially while cycling you need a lot of situational awareness of what's going on around you. I think it's very dangerous not to be able to hear cars coming up from behind.
- fragmede 2y agoin other parts of the world there are dedicated bike trails in nature where there is no danger from cars
- Ichthypresbyter 2y agoReplying to the reply- even in dedicated car-free recreation areas, there are other people doing the same thing as you but going faster.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- callalex 2y agoYou’re absolutely right, but a truly startling amount of people on the trails give absolutely zero care about other trail users and are just reckless antisocial parasites.
- el_benhameen 2y agoSome headphones (eg airpods) have pass-through audio to allow situational awareness. There are also trails in my area that allow bikes but that are very remote and are unlikely to have much bike and pedestrian traffic. It wouldn’t be unsafe to have headphones in there.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoEven without the need for situational awareness, it feels weird to me to feel the need to constantly hear music. When I do a bike ride, for me, the silence is a feature.
- fragmede 2y agovoice control is pretty convenient for those environments
- imiric 2y agoYup, I can see it now: - Single tap on the roof of your mouth: play/pause. - Tap on the inside of your upper left/right teeth: previous/next. - Drag your tongue along the inside of your teeth: playback scroll. - Drag your tongue on the roof of your mouth from front to back and back to front: volume up/down. It seems very intuitive, and like it would be much more precise than any of the finger gestures we use today. My only concerns would be comfort, mistaken inputs, and impact on speech. But then again, some people wear dental jewelry and it doesn't seem so bad. :)
- Zenzero 2y agoWhat an incredible piece of technology. I'm very impressed.
- tomasero 2y agoThank you! We're just getting started :)
- Zenzero 2y agoWhy am I being downvoted for saying this? People on HN complain how a substantial amount of the comments are negative. I give my honest opinion, as a doctor, knowing full well how hard it is to not only clear the hurdles to get to where they are at, but I also appreciate that it is a worthwhile endeavor. In an era where half of the people in tech are wasting their lives optimizing SEO and to sell more ads for useless crap, these people are out there making tangible improvements in people's lives.
- nashadelic 2y agoHow did we not have this 10-15 years ago? It just feels like not enough people work on, or care enough about assistive tech till it impacts them personally.
- cortensinger 2y agoExactly. Its unfortunate that this is the way the world works...but we hope that the MouthPad^ can change that tired script! Universal design benefits us all, not just those at the extremes -- we should all care. See the history of curb cuts on our sidewalks as a small example.
- fragmede 2y agoAs someone who's not a quadriplegic, I want one of these.
- susiecambria 2y agoFor a short time in DC (District of Columbia, USA) government, I worked with Age-Friendly DC. They were all about universal design, obviously. I learned a ton - like how curb cuts are good for folks using canes, walkers, and wheelchairs, and those who push things like strollers. However, the Age-Friendly DC staff could have done much more to work with non-aged policy advocates and organizations, to show them the benefits of things like curb cuts. Personally, I'm using a lot of what I learned from the Age-Friendly folks; my 83yo mom has moved in and the learning curve, while steep, got a head start with my government experience.
- spiritplumber 2y agowe did, there were at least 3 kickstarters (of which i ran one) but not enough people were interested.
- fragmede 2y agothat's so cool that you tried. how much did you spend on advertising for your Kickstarter? I totally would have kicked in if I'd heard about it.
- amanzi 2y agoFascinating. I started to instinctively "scroll" with my tongue while reading the article - felt really intuitive.
- flemhans 2y agoTickles a bit. But the pad might help.
- ZuLuuuuuu 2y agoExactly! I also started to pretend scroll with my tongue and it actually felt quite intuitive. It is a very clever solution! But they will probably need a well written driver which rejects accidental touches since at any point in time my tongue touches the roof of my mouth.
- Fengjiao 2y agowhere are you building them? How much does it cost to build?
- b3lik3wat3r 2y agowholesome content :') x.com/augmentaltech/status/1798701297748902349
- LoganDark 2y agoOh hey, I remember this, signed up to beta test a year or so ago and 6 months later got an email that said I was rejected for being outside of California. I think at the time I found it weird that it took them 6 months.
- tomasero 2y agoHi Logan, thanks for your comment, and apologies for the delay in our response. We're a small company with limited resources, so we've prioritized waitlist applications from those who really need our solution and are close to us. We're working on scaling our operations and hope to serve everyone in the US soon. Stay tuned!
- LoganDark 2y agoIt's fine. I'm not where the money and news coverage is. Go help those quadriplegics.
- trailbits 2y agoI can imagine this helping anyone that has struggled with computer-related overuse injuries. I had a bad case of tendinitis that made using a mouse or trackpad very painful. I would have loved to have this kind of device as another option.
- moffkalast 2y agoI'm really wondering why nobody's selling a foot operated mouse yet, it would be pretty practical even for normal people when typing with both hands.
- trailbits 2y agoI did experiment with using a trackball taped to the floor. It's hard to get precise positioning moving your foot. I think using the tongue along the roof of your mouth would be more precise and less fatiguing. What was more useful was a set of 9 foot switches that could be programmed to send arbitrary keystrokes. I could off load from my hands the most common keypresses I do all day, for example: pageup, pagedown, tab, enter, backspace, mouse click, passwords... along with speech recognition software you can get at least non-coding tasks done without using your hands too much.
- fallingsquirrel 2y agoCan you link the hardware you're using? I have one foot pedal for push-to-talk and I think more could be useful, but I don't want to tie up 9 USB ports.
- trailbits 2y agoYes, push to toggle microphone is another great use for these! I was using the Kinesis Programmable Foot Switch 26 years ago with ps/2 connectors (later they switched to USB). You would get 3 foot switches in each unit and chain them together along with your keyboard so they only used one host port. The most similar thing I see now would be https://www.amazon.com/X-keys-Foot-Pedal-Playback-Control/dp/B009PP6Z50 https://www.amazon.com/X-keys-Foot-Pedal-Playback-Control/dp... It's frustrating that I can't reprogram my old foot switches since the manufacturer stopped supporting them. If buying today, I'd look for something based on open source QMK firmware like my keyboard uses. This project looks cool: https://github.com/christrotter/qmk_firmware/tree/arcboard-series/keyboards/handwired/arcpedals_mk1 https://github.com/christrotter/qmk_firmware/tree/arcboard-s...
- haunter 2y agoWish brolylegs lived to see this :( He was using regular controllers On a side note MS has some neat stuff for disabled gamers, the Adaptive Controller and they worked with Byowave on the upcoming Proteus Controller https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/xbox-adaptive-controller https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/xbox-adap... https://www.byowave.com/product/proteus-controller-early-bird-price https://www.byowave.com/product/proteus-controller-early-bir...
- mongol 2y agoIs there a site where such tools are listed? Some of these may help people without disability too.
- vasco 2y agoI would use this before any voice assistants our neurolinks.
- tomasero 2y agoWe're adding silent speech input and bone conduction audio feedback to the next version of the MouthPad^.
- causality0 2y agoAlso consider perforations in the inert parts of the MouthPad. Especially considering its intended users, it's a choking hazard and sooner or later somebody will get one of these stuck in their throat. You'd rather it not kill them when that happens.
- vinceguidry 2y agoAren't there already products that use eye tracking to locate pointer clicks?
- avtar 2y agoSomething like Eye Gaze perhaps
- mrguyorama 2y agoYes, Tobii sells cheap cameras and SDKs that have done exactly this for years now, to the point that several random games have Eye Tracking integration for no reason.
- brezelgoring 2y agoNot exactly related to disabled people, but a though crossed my mind on how cluttered F1 pilot wheels are with buttons, I imagined some F1 Engineer already thinking on how feature dense these pads can get and how to integrate them into races. Not related, I know.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cromniomancer 2y agoNice to get this before The Jackpot arrives!
- geepytee 2y agoInteresting that he built this after getting closely familiar with Neuralink
- nsonha 2y agoI think in the early Iron-man comic books, it's said that he had some switches controlled by his tongue in the helmet
- mrmetanoia 2y agoI just want this for extra control options in gaming. I bet I could get good at aiming with my tongue. Shorter distance brain to tongue than brain to hands too? Faster response time? Tongue control is going to dominate in esports ;) RGB mouth guards incoming.
- kaashif 2y agoWhat is the average gamer's tongue stamina or tongue dexterity like? How long do you have to practice to improve for this to actually be useful? I feel like it's probably pretty hard to get good with this.
- RoyalHenOil 2y agoSome people have much stronger and more nimble tongues than others due to physical differences (e.g., tongue size, the length of the tongue frenulum, etc.). But this is the case for the hands as well, which is why people have different input preferences and different gameplay preferences. Personally, I think I would prefer a mouth controller over a traditional controller. I am very prone to tendinitis in my hands, plus I have small hands and short fingers, and can't play twitchy games well because of it.
- eimrine 2y agoThe picture of a tongue mouse from article (maybe it's a render I don't know) seems to have maybe 16 dpi so it is probably fits for secondary mouse just for rotating the world, but for tiny pixel-hunting I would like to have something with a multiplicator.
- Geenirvana 2y agoThere is a streamer named RockyNoHands[0] He plays Warzone entirely with his mouth. His controller has tubes that he blows and sucks to control the character. It is really impressive watching him live on such a competitive game. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RockyNoHands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RockyNoHands
- Gloomily3819 2y agoSounds like a pretty good solution for those who can't wait for neural interfaces to become available (and affordable).
- thih9 2y agoThe recently launched Vision Pro and its eye tracking also offers a relatively niche and very accessible input method. It is already being used in this context: > “I was having trouble getting around that day,” he said, so he took the day off and did work for his consulting agency, Equal Accessibility, from bed, wearing the Vision Pro, surrounded by screens he controlled with his eyes and a series of custom mouth-sounds that triggered selections. “As I get older, and this happens more often for me,” he said, “I envision myself working virtually with the AVP even more.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/apple-vision-pro-disabled-users.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/apple-vision-pro-dis...
- wlesieutre 2y agoEye tracking is coming to iPhone and iPad too. I’m sure it won’t work quite as well as the Vision Pro’s hardware, but for someone who can’t take a headset on and off by themselves it’s nice to have options. https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/13/turn-on-iphone-eye-tracking-ios-18/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/13/turn-on-iphone-eye-tracking-i...
- pragma_x 2y agoDoes anyone here know how the sensor technology actually works? Is it capacitive touch, a low voltage electrical connection, or something else? Also, how would something like this differentiate mouse use from speech?
- titzer 2y agoForget code smells. "This code tastes bad."
- zelphirkalt 2y agoThis was written by someone with bad taste.
- th3w3bmast3r 2y agoThis definitely left a sour taste in my mouth.
- causality0 2y agoCan we talk about the absolute perfection of the name? MouthPad sounds like someone trying to say mouse pad with a MouthPad in their mouth. It's beautiful.
- kolbe 2y agoI always thought this would be the best way for anyone to operate a mouse. Not just the disabled.
- freedomben 2y agoBetter than eye-tracking? It's all though-experiment land for me, but when I think about the precision and speed with which I can move and "click" something, nothing beats the eyes.
- kolbe 2y agoMaybe. I just think of all the other things that my eyes want to be doing. I figure that would interfere too much in the usefulness. But i agree. We should just test out all the wacky ideas and see what works best.
- freedomben 2y agoGreat point, maybe that is the weakness in eye tracking. What about a small switch in the mouth you press with your talk, similar to a push-to-talk that activates the eye tracking. When you aren't pressing, you can look around and do other things with your eyes without affecting the computer? Wish I had the bandwidth to take this on right now, because it sounds super fun and something I could be very passionate about.
- freedomben 2y agoKind of tangential, but I don't understand why keyboard/mouse layers haven't caught on more. I kickstarted the UHK[1] years ago, and haven't had a mouse ever since. It does take a little bit of getting used to, but controlling the mouse with a keyboard is really amazing. [1] Ultimate Hacking Keyboard
- Borrible 2y agoI read somewhere about a similar tech a long long time ago. It must have been this one: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224648269_Tongue_drive_A_tongue_operated_magnetic_sensor_based_wireless_assistive_technology_for_people_with_severe_disabilities https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224648269_Tongue_dr...
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoPeople living with such extreme disabilities are so much stronger than me. I put a lot of pride in my independence. If I needed someone else to feed, clothe, and bathe me, I think I'd rather die. I'd feel like I was no longer living, but merely surviving.
- zelphirkalt 2y agoProbably most people would think like that, but it all depends on what you can still do. If you become a good writer or even if you stick to software, but make valuable contributions, that improve the world a bit, or become a great orator, or give people good counsel, or any other great activity, you might find, that that is a goal worth still continuing to live.
- th3w3bmast3r 2y agoReally cool tech!