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Eyes-Free Tongue Gesture and Tongue Joystick Control of a Five DOF Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Severely Disabled Individuals

Spinal cord injury can leave the affected individual severely disabled with a low level of independence and quality of life. Assistive upper-limb exoskeletons are one of the solutions that can enable an individual with tetraplegia (paralysis in both arms and legs) to perform simple activities of dai...

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Autores principales: Mohammadi, Mostafa, Knoche, Hendrik, Thøgersen, Mikkel, Bengtson, Stefan Hein, Gull, Muhammad Ahsan, Bentsen, Bo, Gaihede, Michael, Severinsen, Kåre Eg, Andreasen Struijk, Lotte N. S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8718615/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34975367
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.739279
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author Mohammadi, Mostafa
Knoche, Hendrik
Thøgersen, Mikkel
Bengtson, Stefan Hein
Gull, Muhammad Ahsan
Bentsen, Bo
Gaihede, Michael
Severinsen, Kåre Eg
Andreasen Struijk, Lotte N. S.
author_facet Mohammadi, Mostafa
Knoche, Hendrik
Thøgersen, Mikkel
Bengtson, Stefan Hein
Gull, Muhammad Ahsan
Bentsen, Bo
Gaihede, Michael
Severinsen, Kåre Eg
Andreasen Struijk, Lotte N. S.
author_sort Mohammadi, Mostafa
collection PubMed
description Spinal cord injury can leave the affected individual severely disabled with a low level of independence and quality of life. Assistive upper-limb exoskeletons are one of the solutions that can enable an individual with tetraplegia (paralysis in both arms and legs) to perform simple activities of daily living by mobilizing the arm. Providing an efficient user interface that can provide full continuous control of such a device—safely and intuitively—with multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs) still remains a challenge. In this study, a control interface for an assistive upper-limb exoskeleton with five DOFs based on an intraoral tongue-computer interface (ITCI) for individuals with tetraplegia was proposed. Furthermore, we evaluated eyes-free use of the ITCI for the first time and compared two tongue-operated control methods, one based on tongue gestures and the other based on dynamic virtual buttons and a joystick-like control. Ten able-bodied participants tongue controlled the exoskeleton for a drinking task with and without visual feedback on a screen in three experimental sessions. As a baseline, the participants performed the drinking task with a standard gamepad. The results showed that it was possible to control the exoskeleton with the tongue even without visual feedback and to perform the drinking task at 65.1% of the speed of the gamepad. In a clinical case study, an individual with tetraplegia further succeeded to fully control the exoskeleton and perform the drinking task only 5.6% slower than the able-bodied group. This study demonstrated the first single-modal control interface that can enable individuals with complete tetraplegia to fully and continuously control a five-DOF upper limb exoskeleton and perform a drinking task after only 2 h of training. The interface was used both with and without visual feedback.
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spelling pubmed-87186152022-01-01 Eyes-Free Tongue Gesture and Tongue Joystick Control of a Five DOF Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Severely Disabled Individuals Mohammadi, Mostafa Knoche, Hendrik Thøgersen, Mikkel Bengtson, Stefan Hein Gull, Muhammad Ahsan Bentsen, Bo Gaihede, Michael Severinsen, Kåre Eg Andreasen Struijk, Lotte N. S. Front Neurosci Neuroscience Spinal cord injury can leave the affected individual severely disabled with a low level of independence and quality of life. Assistive upper-limb exoskeletons are one of the solutions that can enable an individual with tetraplegia (paralysis in both arms and legs) to perform simple activities of daily living by mobilizing the arm. Providing an efficient user interface that can provide full continuous control of such a device—safely and intuitively—with multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs) still remains a challenge. In this study, a control interface for an assistive upper-limb exoskeleton with five DOFs based on an intraoral tongue-computer interface (ITCI) for individuals with tetraplegia was proposed. Furthermore, we evaluated eyes-free use of the ITCI for the first time and compared two tongue-operated control methods, one based on tongue gestures and the other based on dynamic virtual buttons and a joystick-like control. Ten able-bodied participants tongue controlled the exoskeleton for a drinking task with and without visual feedback on a screen in three experimental sessions. As a baseline, the participants performed the drinking task with a standard gamepad. The results showed that it was possible to control the exoskeleton with the tongue even without visual feedback and to perform the drinking task at 65.1% of the speed of the gamepad. In a clinical case study, an individual with tetraplegia further succeeded to fully control the exoskeleton and perform the drinking task only 5.6% slower than the able-bodied group. This study demonstrated the first single-modal control interface that can enable individuals with complete tetraplegia to fully and continuously control a five-DOF upper limb exoskeleton and perform a drinking task after only 2 h of training. The interface was used both with and without visual feedback. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8718615/ /pubmed/34975367 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.739279 Text en Copyright © 2021 Mohammadi, Knoche, Thøgersen, Bengtson, Gull, Bentsen, Gaihede, Severinsen and Andreasen Struijk. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Mohammadi, Mostafa
Knoche, Hendrik
Thøgersen, Mikkel
Bengtson, Stefan Hein
Gull, Muhammad Ahsan
Bentsen, Bo
Gaihede, Michael
Severinsen, Kåre Eg
Andreasen Struijk, Lotte N. S.
Eyes-Free Tongue Gesture and Tongue Joystick Control of a Five DOF Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Severely Disabled Individuals
title Eyes-Free Tongue Gesture and Tongue Joystick Control of a Five DOF Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Severely Disabled Individuals
title_full Eyes-Free Tongue Gesture and Tongue Joystick Control of a Five DOF Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Severely Disabled Individuals
title_fullStr Eyes-Free Tongue Gesture and Tongue Joystick Control of a Five DOF Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Severely Disabled Individuals
title_full_unstemmed Eyes-Free Tongue Gesture and Tongue Joystick Control of a Five DOF Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Severely Disabled Individuals
title_short Eyes-Free Tongue Gesture and Tongue Joystick Control of a Five DOF Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Severely Disabled Individuals
title_sort eyes-free tongue gesture and tongue joystick control of a five dof upper-limb exoskeleton for severely disabled individuals
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8718615/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34975367
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.739279
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