Imagine getting into a car accident and having a major spinal cord injury. This injury makes hand movements and walking inevitable including being able to use your own wheelchair. Research has produced a wheelchair that has capabilities of making it move with your tongue. This is very different than the usual wheelchair which is used by hand motion or with those with disabilities beyond that, a keypad. This lets the person be able to be able to rely on themselves and not another person for movement.
The wheelchair is programmed with a magnet placed on your tongue. This magnet acts as a “mouse” to guide your wheelchair through certain obstacles. To move forward all you have to do is move your tongue forward.
The wheelchair seems to be very user friendly as it is liked by many of the participates that have trialed it out. Researchers have designed the system to be used by several people suffering from many different disabilities. The sensor is placed at the tongue for strategic location as it is connected directly to the brain for increased mobility.
This wheelchair shows improvements in today’s technology and skills that have been developed. One day in the near future it will be interesting to see if there is a need for wheels to push on a chair. Sooner or later the technology will be developed to the point where you wouldn’t have to extend any part of your body to move in a wheelchair and that it will be directly hooked up to your brain.
If you interested in reading about a personal account of the wheelchair mobility with the tongue, check out this link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/25/hm.wheelchair.tongue/index.html#expand1
I think this kind of technology is great. I could never imagine losing my mobility and it's great to see that products like this are being introduced into the market to help those with disabilities cope with life the best they can. It will be interesting to see once they can hook it directly into the brain if they can one up Mother Nature and even improve on it more.
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