The Development and Implementation of Assistive Systems for the Persons with Severe Disability

Project:The main goal of this project is to construct a “Assistive Technology Living Lab (ATLL)” for the personswith severe disabilities. The ATLL is a user-centric, open-innovation ecosystem operating in amulti-context and real life scenarios for persons with severe disabilities. In the ATLL, all research teamswhich try to develop assistive systems could be integrated through the co-creation, user requirementsanalysis, experimentation and evaluation of innovative prototyping, and business models analysis. Based oncontinuous feedback on the products developed by the team, we can develop systems which can solve theneeds of persons with severe disability. The RTLL intend to construct four different kinds of research spacefor developing assistive systems for four kinds of persons with disability: (1) sub-project 1: The main goalof this sub-project is to develop several assistive systems which allow people with severe disabilities (e.g.,amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patient) to use their limited voluntary motions to access computers,communicate with family and friends, and control home appliances. (2) sub-project 2: ChineseFingerReader, well be developed to assistive visually impaired persons with reading Chinese printed text.Visually impaired persons can easily apply the Chinese FingerReader sequentially to scan Chinese printedtext in a local view image, and hear the recognized words synthesized to audible speech. (3) In the first andsecond years of this sub-project, a social story interactive sub-system and a picture cue card interactivesub-system will be developed to promote autism children with social skills. In the third year of thissub-project, an emotional feedback sub-system will be developed to learn the correctly social emotion withautism children.(4) sub-project 4: the three-year sub-project 4 is expected to establish a rehabilitationsystem for Parkinson's disease, which will enable patients to perform gait rehabilitation, physicalrehabilitation and self-assessment at home through systematic instructions.Sub-project 1:The main goal of this sub-project is to develop several assistive systems which allow people with severedisabilities to use their limited voluntary motions to access computers, communicate with family and friends,and control home appliances. In the first year, we will develop a “sleep status monitoring system” and a“multi-functional bi-state recognition system”. While the sleep status monitoring system will issue an alarmsignal to his or her family members or caregivers whenever the person with severe disability, themulti-functional bi-state recognition system which allows people with severe disabilities to use eyes, eyebrows or mouth to access computers and communicate with other persons. In the second year, we willdevelop a “multi-functional hoe appliance control system” to allow the person with severe disability tocontrol several different home appliances. In addition, we will develop a “multi-functional sensor-basedswitching system” which uses low-cost sensors to replace the camera used in the “multi-functional bi-staterecognition system”. In the third year, we will cooperate with the medical teams at the landseed hospital tocarry out some pilot trials and then improve the systems developed by us according to the users’ feedbacks.Sub-project 2:In the first and second years of this sub-project, a finger-worn device, Chinese FingerReader, well bedeveloped to assistive visually impaired persons with reading Chinese printed text. Visually impaired personscan easily apply the Chinese FingerReader sequentially to scan Chinese printed text in a local view image,and hear the recognized words synthesized to audible speech. In the third year of this sub-project, the aid forvisually impaired persons to learn Chinese Braille will be developed. The proposed aid can help them tostudy Braille typing and shorten the time of learning. Finally, these developed aids will be t