The Mouth Mouse: An Intuitive Bluetooth Controller of Electronic Systems for Persons with Upper-Limb Impairment

Abstract

Abstract Manual dexterity is key to engaging one’s environment and interfacing with technologies for communication and personal computing. Individuals with marginal or no dexterity are faced with obstacles and barriers limiting educational opportunity, workplace productivity, independent living and community participation. We have, developed an effective and intuitive Bluetooth tongue controller (a.k.a. “Mouth Mouse”) designed to give people with severe upper limb impairment effective control of computers, smart phones and tablets. The device is inherently portable requiring no external hardware or supporting software and thus can be used virtually anywhere. Preliminary testing has shown the Mouth Mouse to be an effective computer input device. In this paper we outline key design objectives and present preliminary data demonstrating the efficacy of the Mouth Mouse as a computer input device.