Wireless Home Assistive System for Severely Disabled People

Abstract

A lot of people with severe disabilities such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, motor neuron diseases, cerebral palsy, stroke, and spinal cord injury with intubation always have different degrees of communication problems. Therefore, it is very important to develop an effective and easy use assistive communication system for the severely disabled. In this study, a wireless home assistive system (WHAS) with different types of assistive input accessories sensors, Morse code translator, and human machine interface is developed and tested to help the severely disabled communicate with people and machines. A Morse code translator is implemented as an assistive communication core device to facilitate the input of the severely disabled. For the proposed human–machine interfaces, personal computer-based alternative augmentative communication is developed for patients to communicate with other people easily. To promote the quality of life, the home appliance control interface is developed for the severely disabled to directly control the functions of home appliances by themselves. The experimental results showed that the proposed WHAS is practical and feasible. Therefore, the proposed approach can help severely disabled individuals effectively interact with their surroundings.