A high-resolution tongue based joystick to enable robot control for individuals with severe disabilities

Assistive robotic arms have shown the potential
to improve the quality of life of people with severe disabilities.
However, a high performance and intuitive control interface
for robots with 6-7 DOFs is still missing for these individuals.
An inductive tongue computer interface (ITCI) was recently
tested for control of robots and the study illustrated potential
in this field. The paper describes the investigation of the
possibility of developing a high performance tongue based
joystick-like controller for robots through two studies. The
first compared different methods for mapping the 18 sensor
signals to a 2D coordinate, as a touchpad. The second evaluated
the performance of a novel approach for emulating an analog
joystick by the ITCI based on the ISO9241-411 standard.
Two subjects performed a multi-directional tapping test using
a standard analog joystick, the ITCI system held in hand
and operated by the other hand, and finally by tongue when
mounted inside the mouth. Throughput was measured as the
evaluation parameter. The results show that the contact on
the touchpads can be localized by almost 1 mm accuracy. The
throughput of ITCI system for the multi-directional tapping test
was 0.82 bps while keeping it in the hand and 0.73 bps when
using it inside the mouth, comparing to 1.99 bps throughput
of the analog joystick.