SH: We are pushing the boundaries of what is possible through technology. Without it I would not be able to speak to you today.
Male: He was down to about a word a minute
Lama: Every time he needed to access his machine, open files, surf the web, all of these actions were very, very tedious because he had to rely
on a mouse. Which was really very hard for someone who doesnt have the ability to move a mouse. We wanted to build a more open platform that allowed
us to really quickly configure and change things so that were constantly iterating and trying, bring in different work predictors, bring in
different sensors, change the UI, do all of these things by way of maybe changing XML files rather than doing a lot of coding.
Sai:The system was built using a Visual Studio, C#, new standard Windows fonts, .NET 4.5, we also used some WPF and we used a standard Microsoft
pluggable framework of paradigm to load all the DLLs at runtime. Everything was built around this one actuation mechanism where he uses
his cheek to trigger the system, the system responds
Sanjita: And we collected hours and hours of footage of just his face of him interacting with the system, what was the range of motion,
did it change with the time of the day, when he was tired you want the system to trigger, you want the software interface to work.
Lama: We interated a lot with him being as a key designer and the minute he started using it he would find something and then hed come back
to us and you know hell have this like huge smile on his face.
Sanjita: His access to many of the common functions on his machine was about a 10x improvement. Stephen was actually quite adamant
about open sourcing the system. The nice thing about having such an open platform is that really people from different areas of research
and development can really make a huge impact.
Lama: So please help us, we cant wait to see what your contributions will bring to the world of disabilities.
SH: I challenge you all here to excel to bring about the changes you want in the world. Keep pushing and never give up. Welcome to Connect.
