that would enable individuals that have

severe physical disabilities

to use their tongue motion

in order to do things, to go after their daily lives

so we can take advantage of the abilities of the tongue

in order to enable this person to

for example access computers, move a mouse cursor

on the screen or drive a wheelchair

The way Tongue Drive works is actually pretty simple idea, we

attach a tiny magnet on the tongue

towards the tip of the tongue, as the tongue moves,

we can sense the changes in the magnetic field.

And then, our headset

has a wireless connection to a smartphone that is worn

by the user. It can detect where and

in what direction, and at what location,

the tongue and this tiny magnet is, and

execute that that comment by sending the proper signals to the wheelchair

to follow my command.

This was our first study, both on able-bodied subjects

the able-bodied volunteers as well as people

with high level spinal cord injury, by high-level

these are individuals that are completely paralyzed from neck

down, in order to see how well it works compared to a

very popular assistive technology

the disabled subjects try to do the same task with the Tongue Drive System

and with Sip-N-Puff, and we looked at their performance

on average our results show that their performance with the Tongue Drive System

were

three times better than the Sip-N-Puff.

I have put it as my mission to

help ease these individuals to become more independent, it not only

lowers their health care costs, it is beneficial to the society,

it's beneficial to their family members and caregivers,

but most important of all, it is beneficial to themselves, because they

cannot go back to

how they were, but at least I can help them

to be more independent and self sufficient