MIT Assistive Technology Design

2 weeks ago, I attended the Abilities Expo, which is an event that showcases assistive technologies and adaptive activities to the community. There were all kinds of technologies, ranging from a robotic arm that can attach to a wheelchair to a light board to be used by children with cognitive disabilities as an educational game. However, most of what I ended up spending my time exploring were the technologies involved in adaptive sports.

Racing Wheelchairs:

One of my first stops was to a booth that had different types of racing wheelchairs. There were many different designs on display. I got to demo one type that was much lower to the ground than a normal wheelchair, had three wheels, and used hand-pedals to move forward.

Racing-style wheelchair with hand pedals

The chair can go quite fast, and I found it easier to drive around than the hospital wheelchairs we tried out during our wheelchair lab. Getting to actually test out the different equipment they had on display gave me a good opportunity to think about design considerations when creating a product.

Power Soccer:

The most exciting part of the Expo for me was getting to see a demonstration of power soccer, which is soccer adapted for wheelchair users.

To play, a cage-like object called a footguard is attached to everyone’s wheelchair which is used both to hit the ball more easily and to provide protection. A ball larger than a normal soccer ball is used in order to adapt the game more for the way the ball is moved around the field. I especially liked a move some of the players performed where they would rotate their chair in a circle quickly to gain speed before hitting the ball, which launched the ball down the field.

Larger than normal balls are used to make moving the ball around the field easier

Footguards are attached to the wheelchairs for protection and maneuvering the ball

It was interesting to listen to the announcer of power soccer talk about what the sport meant to him. A disability can often feel like a very limiting thing, and there are a lot of opportunities that seem closed off. But power sports allow people with disabilities to have teammates, to work together with friends, and to have a fun time engaging in competition. It’s amazing what technology in conjunction with great people can do to improve the lives of people with disabilities.

The session did not go as planned.

After about 7 minutes of pleading with Carl not to turn his new communication device off, he seemed to concede. I gave myself an inner pat on the back. Onward, speech therapy soldier. After a long pause for contemplation, Carl stood up from the table, walked over to the chalkboard, and peed on the floor.

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Later that day, in a meeting with Carl’s teacher, I began to realize that his device might actually present a danger of sorts. “What’s the point of this thing, “ she asked, “if he won’t even use it to ask to go to the bathroom?” Indeed, Carl’s AAC device was intended to help him communicate a range of ideas, from the most basic (e.g., I need the restroom) to more sophisticated (e.g., I hate speech therapy so much that I’m now going to pee on your floor in protest); however, it was not intended to teach him those communicative skills. Five thousand dollars bought Carl an AAC device, but it didn’t magically transfer the cognitive skills he would need to communicate. The task of teaching remained at the hands of his family, therapists, and educators, and any illusion to the contrary would cost Carl valuable skills and perpetuate frustration among all parties.

I once thought of this as an issue specific to high-tech AAC devices, but after Wednesday’s lab I would argue it applies more broadly to the field of assistive technology. The technology we design and create to meet the needs of any individual isn’t the end goal; likewise, the absence of assistive technology isn’t the problem.

Assistive technology is a tool. Individual development, inclusion, participation – those are the solutions.

What do you think when you see someone who looks like this?

Or doing this?

Recently, I have been thinking about whether a person’s physical appearance reflects their health. A person who is large in size may be prone to develop diabetes or heart disease. The consequences from his weight could kill him. Similarly when I see someone smoking I visualize the picture of black lungs that was drilled into me in middle school. I think about the statistic that each cigarette smoked shortens life by seven minutes. There seems to be a connection between the way a person looks and his health. If you look unhealthy, you likely are unhealthy.

Then I meet someone like Steve

He has a diagnosis and disability far more debilitating than obesity or black lung. He has ALS and would lose most of his muscle function over several months. His challenges include not being able to walk, talk, eat and even breathe. He is in a wheelchair and relies upon a feeding tube and mechanical ventilator. Steve would readily trade his ALS diagnosis for obesity and black lung.

His condition is not uncommon. 1 in every 350 men and 1 in every 500 women will die from ALS. Most people who have ALS were previously in perfect health. There is a strange irony in appearances.

The summer camp where I worked for three summers and was a camper for two, will always be a very special place to me. The camp slogan, simple as it is, really just sums it all up — “a camp for ALL youth”. And that is what it was. An incredibly comfortable and accepting second home for kids and counselors of all backgrounds and all abilities. With counselors from all over the world and campers from all sorts of different home lives, everyone was enriched by the experience of living and cooperating with people with cultures very different from their own. Differences are celebrated.

One of the best parts of camp by far is its inclusive program, called ECHO, for campers with a disability or any sort of special needs. About a fifth of all campers enroll in the program, and though it requires some special application, ECHO campers are fully integrated into every aspect of camp life. Though each camper may need extra attention and assistance in certain areas, the overarching goal is for every camper to be treated indistinguishably from the next. Camp activities are planned and conducted specifically for those participating and everyone is always included. If an activity needs to be modified, we try to modify it for everybody.

Being a part of this type of environment gave everyone involved a great deal of respect for one another, which was never quite developed in the radically different way students separated and excluded by ability in most (at least my) public school. Camp is an invaluable experience to develop self-confidence, independence, competence, and social skills and at Camp Howe every child, regardless of physical/ mental ability is able to partake, benefiting all children, with or without special needs. I wish “the real world” was more like camp.

Robert W. demonstrates walking with the ReWalker 6.0 exoskeleton

In the past 10 years, exoskeletons have been featured just about nonstop in movies. From Iron Man, to Edge of Tomorrow, and even the upcoming Batman V Superman movie, exoskeletons which use robotics to enhance human strength are the new “dream technology.” For some people though, that dream is already becoming a reality.

Some of the most cutting edge exoskeleton research being done on around the world actually relates to people who wouldn’t stand to gain super powers from them, but rather simply stand to restore their lives to normal. Labs like the MIT Biomechatronics Group are creating groundbreaking developments in the production of exoskeletons and human augmentations, with their goals being to use their technologies to restore full physical capabilities to people with disabilities. Some companies like ReWalk have already created products which can allow people who would otherwise be incapable of standing, to walk again and live a seemingly normal life. This product works using a complex robotic walking mechanism which can strap onto the user’s body and be controlled discretely through gyroscopic controllers in a wristband. The walking legs then take the place of the users’, and allow for the user to not only walk at a reasonable pace, but to climb stairs as well. With the rate of this growing field, I have no doubt that in the upcoming years, we will see the creation of exoskeletons which can not only match a healthy human’s capabilities, but can surpass them as well. Wielding a fully functioning exoskeleton, it’s only a matter of time before people with disabilities are looked at as the true superheroes that so many already are.

To me, the very idea of learning disability is very foreign. It was something I would read about in gossip articles or overhear from the hushed conversation of my neighbors. In South Korea where people are way more conservative about anything ‘mental’ or different, people are scared to get any label with the slightest negative connotation – even if they need to get help for it. Then they are put under ‘fair’ competition: everyone gets tested the same way, and everyone gets judged on the outcomes.

(From: http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2012/08/cartoons-climb-that-tree.html)

For this class, I was introduced to Stacy, a medical student at Harvard, who was learning to cope with her dyslexia. She was still accustoming herself to the assistive technology available, and she needed our help building a customizable feature for her recent needs. She was the first dyslexic person I’ve met. She clearly described to us her problem and her needs. She has no trouble processing the information, but she has harder time extracting and retaining information from a block of text. That had been a problem.

I am really excited about working on this project. I am learning about technology to empower those whose brains are wired slightly differently from most other people. I am changing how I look at disability. Maybe one day, having learning disabilities would be something equivalent to not having good vision. Oh, your vision is fuzzy and you can’t read your textbook? Here are your glasses. Oh, you read vertically? Here’s your vertically reformatted text.

A group of us attended the Boston Abilities Expo over the weekend. The expo, held over the course of 3 days, showcases various assistive technologies and sports demos.

We had the opportunity to try out some of the wheelchairs specialized for sports. Having just participated in the wheelchair lab with heavy geriatric wheelchairs, the lightness and maneuverability of the basketball wheelchair I tried was amazing. Also, unlike the geriatric wheelchair, the wheels on the basketball wheelchair were tilted at an angle to allow quick, sharp turns, and the back and sides were a lot lower to allow for a greater range of motion. We also saw wheelchairs designed for tennis, road races, and more.

Geriatric wheelchair from the wheelchair lab

Basketball wheelchair

There were also several products for wheelchair customization. There were different colors of grips for the rims of wheels, as well as different types of padding and support systems to make wheelchairs more comfortable. Seeing these products reminded me that wheelchairs can be a huge part of someone’s life, and the ability to personalize it can be just as important as adding things like high tech robotic arms.

We also got the chance to see the Boston Brakers, a power wheelchair soccer team, play a demo soccer game. Their power wheelchairs were fitted with a metal guard in the front, which not only protects the players from clashes, but also allows them to “kick” and “dribble” a soccer ball. The creativity and skills of some of the players was really cool to watch; we saw them spin the wheelchairs 360 degrees to deliver powerful shots, pass to one another with great accuracy, and skillfully maneuver the court.

Overall, it was great to see the different types of assistive technologies and adaptive activities. I’m looking forward to learning more as the semester progresses!

When I found out that my PPAT project would involve dyslexia, it gave me quite the throwback. In my senior year of high school, I was a research intern under an enabling technology professor at a local university, and my project dealt specifically with dyslexia.

During my high school internship, I read scientific literature about dyslexia and literacy. Dyslexic children’s struggle with literacy can affect their ability to learn, as most classrooms use extensive amounts of text. Literacy is affected by phonological and morphological awareness–basically, ability to break down words into syllables and meaningful parts. Dyslexic children test below average for both abilities, so most strategies for improving literacy in dyslexic children involve training phonological and morphological awareness.

In my research, I also found that educational video games could be used to improve literacy in dyslexic children. There have been studies that have found that educational video games can be especially effective in dyslexic children, perhaps because video games access areas of the brain not limited to short-term memory, which can be impaired in dyslexic children.

The results of my research led me to create a browser-based video game to train phonological and morphological awareness abilities, Word Blaster. A video of an example of the game being played to train phonological awareness, by visualizing the syllable breakdown of a word, can be seen below:

Word Blaster was one of the highlights of my senior year, and it feels like things have come full circle now that, four years later, I’m a senior again, doing another assistive technology project targeting dyslexia. I’m looking forward to this semester!

If you’d like to try playing the game, here’s a link:
http://majin.mit.edu/wordblaster/

If you’re interested in reading the full paper about the game/research, you can read it here:
Word Blaster Research Paper

3D printing has transformed the landscape of the assistive technology industry—making it faster, easier, and cheaper to build personalized devices to benefit those individuals with disabilities. Here are some of the ways 3D printing has revolutionized this arena:

Hearing aids

The story of how 3D printing transformed the production of hearing aids is almost a fairytale. It’s taken a fairly labor-intensive process and automated. In this process, 3D scanners are used to create an ear impression, a technician fits the impressions with different shapes or models, and the final shell is manufactured using a 3D printer. Today, it takes only day to produce the final product. Because of increased efficiency and output of this system, almost all hearing aid shells and molds are made via 3D printing technology.

3D printing hearing aid

Prosthetics

Going along a similar storyline, 3D printing is also increasing the accessibility of prosthetics for those individuals suffering from motor disabilities. Recently, a UK startup, Open Bionics, announced the creation of a 3D printed robotic limb that can be assembled in under 40 hours and costs around $1500, less than half the cost of the cheapest robotic limb on the market. This limbs also have sensing and motor abilities similar to those of more expensive bionic devices.

3D-printed robotic hand by Open Bionics

Educational Tools for the Visually Impaired

Finally, 3D printing is changing the way children with visual impairments can learn. There is an increasing number of tactile charts, diagrams, and images that these blind children can “see.” While such visual aids have been around for some time, it is only due to the commercialization of 3D printing technology that these tools be affordable for the schools and the students they serve.

A 3D printed depiction of the human eye.

And these 3D printing innovations for assistive technologies are only just the beginning.

dbGlove is a sensory device designed to help the deaf-blind communicate.  Image Source

The dbGlove is set to be released in early 2016. This technology is designed to help the deaf-blind more easily communicate by taking advantage of their iPhone. dbGlove makes use of the Malossi alphabet, a communication method involving the use of a person’s hand as a typewriter. (see infographic below)

Description of The Malossi Alphabet. Image Source

The dbGlove consist of a sensory pad that sits in a users left hand. The user acts as their own typist and inputs the letters that are then transmitted to their iPhone via Bluetooth. Once there, that message can be displayed to a non-user, transmitted to speech, or sent to someone. Responses are then received as vibrations representing the touch cues the communication partner would exercise.

This development is particularly interesting  to me because I had a similar project in high school. Obviously it is not as high-tech as the dbGlove, but we had very similar goals. The Speakey Speakey is designed to take input from an American Sign Language (ASL) user and display the letters on an LCD screen.

LCD Screen (left) developed to display text inputed from the Speakey Speaky Glove (right).

The goal was to facilitate communication between ASL users & non-users. The Speakey Speakey takes advantage of the Makey Makey (developed at MIT!) that allows anything that is conductive to be used as a key on a keyboard. The glove takes in these manual inputs, submits it to the Arduino, and displays it on the screen once the user taps the return “key” on the glove.

Deeper research & further development on the Speakey Speakey could’ve led to a similar impact as the dbGlove. So close, yet so far.