Interconnected Wearable Sensors for People Living with Paralysis
Lab of Things (LoT), developed by Microsoft Research, is a flexible platform for experimental research that uses connected devices in homes and beyond. A multi-disciplinary team from the University of Maryland uses the Lab of Things as the platform to interconnect wearable sensors like gloves, headbands, and capacitive sensors built into clothing, bedsheets, and wheelchair pads. These sensors capture and monitor subtle motions such as finger twitching, lower arm rotation, and head movements among paralysis patients, with the ultimate goal of providing these individuals the ability to control appliances in caregiving and home settings.
Transcript
00:00:00 [Music] the lab of things by the very nature of this design of the platform allows you to innovate quickly it allows you to test out a design it tests out your ideas very quickly in real environments collect data and then say if your design is working or not working which is a very big motivation for Innovation we are developing uh textile based
00:00:28 capacitive sensors that could be build into clothing bed sheets pillow covers and even wheelchair pads so the idea here is to use these sensors as proximity sensors to detect gestures for people with paralysis so people with paralysis can use these gestures for controlling the environment whether it's lights switches televisions U making a 911 call or even making a nurse call lab
00:00:54 of things essentially provides the software framework on top of which we have built the data collection unit data processing unit and gesture detection unit there are individuals that have troubles with use of their arms there are different adaptations that people can use in rehab now but they're either quite expensive or they um can cause damage to the skin with long-term use
00:01:18 and so saw a real potential in this particular project in that it was touchless and they were really looking at keeping something that was quite cost effective um therefore it would actually be something that individuals that have disabilities could afford and would use in everyday life we're looking at a system perspective where you don't develop the pieces or layers of the
00:01:40 system independently you look at how each piece fits in the bigger system you make sure you're designing that piece in the context of that larger system if you end up building all the pieces separately you get a very disjoint system that's not optimal and in particular where you're looking for extreme miniaturization and things like ultra low power you really have to
00:01:59 design each piece to do what it needs to do and nothing more I uh broke my neck at the age of 17 um in a surfing diving accident water went from about 9 ft to about a half a foot my board hit I hit and the wave hit and that's how it became an incomplete quadriplegic I think that in research teaming up engineers and physical therapist um really um creates a team
00:02:29 that has a broad perspective my goal is to work with these Engineers who have great creative and innovative ideas and as it's being developed have the end user in mind so that they're developing it knowing the physical capabilities of the enduser whether that's somebody with spinal cord injury or stroke or some other physical disability one of the most rewarding things about this project
00:02:55 is not only working at the circuits and algorithm level itself but being able to see see a direct impact all the way up the stack the whole way up to the user to see a user actually use the system and when you see that product work and that's what's so great about this Microsoft framework is it's trying to accelerate bringing that technology into a larger framework where we can see an
00:03:15 experiment at all levels very rapidly we want this product being used by people with paralysis all over the place and making them more independent in the short term we have to solve a lot of research problems out there but in the long term what I Envision is is actually a commercial product My Hope for this project is with this technology to have folks that have injuries such as
00:03:38 quadriplegics or other types of impairments of their maybe upper extremities to be able to be more independent to have the confidence that they don't have to rely on someone all the time this way they can live their life as normal as possible and to be able to just get out have fun and enjoy life lab of things brings down the barriers of doing research with
00:04:07 connected devices it brings down the barriers by allowing people to deploy at skill and deploy in diverse geographies and that is the power of the lab of things