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Communication Assistive Technology from Letterboard to My Tobii Arne Lykke Larsen Denmark

Communication Assistive Technology from Letterboard to My Tobii Arne Lykke Larsen Denmark.

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Communication Assistive Technology from Letterboard to My Tobii Arne Lykke Larsen Denmark

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  1. Communication Assistive Technology from Letterboard to My TobiiArne Lykke LarsenDenmark

  2. Thank you, it is nice to be in Estonia for the first time in my life, and it is nice to see so many intelligent people. Perhaps, I should explain how I give this talk? I can essentially only move my eyeballs, so therefore I have an eye controlled computer. There are cameras in the computer, that follow my eyeballs, so I can move the cursor by moving my eyeballs. I click, by holding the cursor stationary at a point in half a second. Notice, that there is no physical connection between the computer and me, there are neither keyboard nor mouse, there are only the eyes. It is somewhat like seeing pornographic movies on television, in the sense that you can watch, but you cannot touch. I should also say, that the voice you hear, is not my voice, and it is not somebodies recorded voice on tape. It is a synthetic electronic computer voice, developed by a private company, and it is very expensive. But it sounds alright, doesn't it? Külli told me, that the Estonian synthetic voice sounds like a robot. Let me first say a few words about my own situation. I was diagnosed with ALS 10 years ago, at the age of 35. So I am now 39 years old! Today, my whole body is completely paralyzed, I can only move my eyeballs and eyebrows and have some mimics. I cannot breathe myself, I got a ventilator 5 years ago. Despite my serious handicap, I still hold my position at the university, and I go to work every day. This is possible because of, among other things, some high-tech communication systems. But I will come back to that. I will talk about communication for Pals, who cannot speak of course, this is obvious. If you can speak, you have no problems, at least not communicating. I will also talk about communication for Pals, who cannot use their hands and fingers. If you can use your hands and fingers, you have no problems, at least not communicating, you don't need computers or light writers or anything, you can just write notes on a piece of paper. I think that Pals, who can speak or use their hands and fingers are cheating, in other words, they are dishonest, they are crooks, and I don't deal with crooks!Outline: The spelling system/LetterboardHead mouse and the Chin mouseEye tracker computersBrainfingers

  3. The spelling system/LetterboardI have used the spelling system for 7 or 8 years, without knowing that the correct name is a letterboard. It was actually Külli, who told me that it is called a letterboard, so I will never call it the spelling system anymore. Anyway, A good safe choice for communication is the spelling system. As you can see, the alphabet is inserted into a 5 times 6 matrix. Here is the Danish alphabet, with its strange letters, but you can make it with your favourite alphabet. The system works in the following way:My personal assistant counts the rows 1, 2, 3.... until I lift an eyebrow. She then reads the letters in the appropriate row, until I again lift an eyebrow. This gives us the first letter in the first word of what I want to say, and the process is then repeated for the next letter, etc. This possibly sounds infinitely slowly, but you will be amazed how fast it is! First of all, we are not looking at the spelling system, we know it by heart. Secondly, when the assistant knows a few letters, she can often guess the word and if she knows a few words, she can perhaps guess the whole sentence. There are, of course, other ways to point out the correct letter you want, than lifting an eyebrow. If you can nod, you can nod, if you can point by a finger, you can point by a finger etc. One of my friends in Denmark, has the spelling system projected on a wall, and he uses a laser light at his head to point out the correct letter. But most of my friends use an eyebrow or simply the eye to indicate what letter one wants. Anyone can learn the spelling system and be able to communicate at some speed, and notice that the spelling system costs absolutely nothing. So everybody can afford it, just write the alphabet down on a piece of paper!

  4. The advantage of the spelling system is that it always works. It works inside and outside. It works in the car, it works in the shower, it works in the bed, etc. The disadvantage is that it takes a long time to say very long sentences. If I for instance want to say something complicated and intelligent, then it soon becomes very tedious using the spelling system. Unless, of course, if the personal assistant can more or less guess what I am saying. But then it cannot be very complicated and intelligent.... I am usually sitting at least 10 hours at the computer each day, and then I use the computer to speak if I want to say something. Personally I use the spelling system mainly for small talk, and to give direct orders to my personal assistants when I want my basic needs to be fulfilled. Then I spell for instance (in alphabetical order): Beer, food, redwine, sex, tv, water etc. Perhaps you have seen the French movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, about the Elle editor who had a stroke and could only move his left eye. They had a spelling system, where the assistant mentioned all the letters, but in the order where they appear the most in a normal text. This is much more complicated than our spelling system, but that was the best the frog eaters could present. On the other hand, if you want to do poetry or philosophy or theoretical physics, then the spelling system is not really adequate. For that, you need a computer, and some way to control it. I will talk about several different high-tech systems: Head mouse and Chin mouse.I lost the ability to speak 7 or 8 years ago, and we immediately begun to use the spelling system. I lost the ability to use my hands and fingers almost 10 years ago, that is, immediately after I got the diagnosis ALS, so I could not use a keyboard of a computer. However, my neck muscles were strong and I could move my head freely in all directions. So I got a Head mouse, which is a device that you hang on the computer, which ejects infrared light. Then you fix a silver dot on you front or on your glasses or wherever on your face, and then the cursor on the computer screen follows your head movements, in the sense that the infrared light is reflected by the silver dot on your face. This is an extremely efficient way to control your computer, the Head mouse is very fast and precise and you can do anything at the computer with it! A Head mouse costs about 6000 dollars, and it is extremely good if you have strong neck muscles. I have short experience with the Chin mouse also. It is essentially a tennis ball, which you can control using your chin. It takes also strong neck muscles, but then you can control your computer as well as driving the wheelchair etc.

  5. Eye tracker computers.I lost the ability to use a Head mouse 6 years ago, because I could not control my head movements anymore. Then there are few possibilities to use a computer, one of them is an eye tracker computer. An eye tracker computer is based on gaze interaction, that is, you gaze or stare at certain parts of the computer screen and then the computer responds. As you can imagine, eye tracker computers are very expensive. This is a Tobii computer and it costs 30.000 dollars. Anyway, this computer is standard for people in Denmark, who can only move their eyeballs. A Tobii computer is one among many eye tracker computers, but it is certainly not the best one! The advantage of the Tobii computer is that it is portable and it is possible to mount it on a wheelchair, moreover it is insensitive to the fact that the user wear glasses. Not so many eye tracker computers are portable and possible to mount on the wheelchair and many eye tracker computers focus on the glasses instead of the eyeballs, so you simply cannot use these eye tracker computers, if you wear glasses! So these are important advantages. The main disadvantage is that the Tobii computer is not precise enough. It works reasonably well, if you only use Tobii software, but if you want to use the whole windows package, it is simply not precise enough. I am so lucky that I am still in a job, so I have two eye tracker computers, the Tobii computer which is portable, and a stationary computer with the Quick Glance eye tracker system. The computer with the Quick Glance eye tracker system is much more precise than the Tobii computer. For instance, all my friends who have only the Tobii computer cannot browse the internet! And I can only browse the internet on my stationary computer with the Quick Glance eye tracker system. It is a quite technical thing which makes the Tobii computer less precise than the other eye tracker computers, something like the number of calibration points near the boundary of the computer screen, which I will not go further into, unless you ask me questions. But I have discussed this point with the Swedish people behind the Tobii computer for 6 months, but they are not serious people, in the sense, that they don't want to improve the Tobii computer.There is a Norwegian eye tracker computer, Roll Talk, it is also more precise than the Tobii computer, because you can choose the number of calibration points yourself. And it is portable and possible to mount on the wheelchair. However, the computer screen is so tiny, that is it difficult to use with the eyes.Let me finish this issue about eye tracker computers by saying, that right now they are very expensive, the prices go from 20.000 dollars. But my friends at the IT University in Copenhagen are trying to develop a system where you can use an ordinary web camera, which you can buy for 20 to 30 dollars, and then you can do gaze interaction on your ordinary laptop computer, almost for free. I should say that it does not work yet!

  6. Brainfingers. However, you can get an efficient computer system for much less money. Namely a system called Brainfingers, for a prize of about 175 dollars. I should say that the original Brainfingers is somewhat more expensive, but recently, Brainfingers collaborated with a private company, which produces computer games, and the result is a version of Brainfingers, called N I A, which costs only 175 dollars, and for this prize, you get a very efficient communication system. There is another reason why I mention this system. When you get a ventilator in Denmark, you more or less have to sign a contract which says that the ventilation treatment will finish when you are "locked in", which means that you cannot communicate anymore. The physicians say that when you have ALS, you will eventually not be able to communicate anymore, and then they find it ethically correct to stop the ventilation treatment. But don't listen to the physicians! Using Brainfingers you can always communicate, at least if you are clear in your mind! Brainfingers is actually a switch, but you don't need to move an arm or a leg to activate the switch. Brainfingers works through a headband and scanning the alphabet. Brainfingers amplifies any muscle you may have left, so you can for instance control your computer by lifting an eyebrow or by an infinitesimal bite. And even if you have no muscles left at all, you can use Brainfingers by using brainwaves, that is EEG, Electroencephalographics. In Brainfingers you can use alpha waves and beta waves, where beta waves have higher frequencies than alpha waves. If you for instance think about sex or Margaret Thatcher, you immediately get into the high frequency range, that is, the beta waves. On the other hand, if you think about sex with Margaret Thatcher, you immediately get into the low frequency range, that is, the alpha waves. And in this way, you can control your computer! I should say, that I have used Brainfingers for one year at the university, and it works perfectly well, but it is slower than eye tracker computers, so you cannot communicate so fast with Brainfingers. I will conclude my talk, by saying that talking is completely overrated. Don't listen to people who can talk, they are dishonest, they are crooks, thank you for your attention.

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