Passive wireless tags for tongue controlled assistive technology interfaces

Tongue control with low profile, passive mouth tags is demonstrated as a human–device interface by communicating values of tongue-tag

separation over a wireless link. Confusion matrices are provided to demonstrate user accuracy in targeting by tongue position. Accuracy is

found to increase dramatically after short training sequences with errors falling close to 1% in magnitude with zero missed targets. The

rate at which users are able to learn accurate targeting with high accuracy indicates that this is an intuitive device to operate. The

significance of the work is that innovative very unobtrusive, wireless tags can be used to provide intuitive human–computer interfaces

based on low cost and disposable mouth mounted technology. With the development of an appropriate reading system, control of assistive

devices such as computer mice or wheelchairs could be possible for tetraplegics and others who retain fine motor control capability of

their tongues. The tags contain no battery and are intended to fit directly on the hard palate, detecting tongue position in the mouth with

no need for tongue piercings.