Slide-1 Title My name is Kazuyuki ITOH I came from Japan. Research Institute, of National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities. The device I'd like to introduce today is [Light Spot Operated Mouse Emulator for Cervical Spinal-Cord Injured PC Users] I'll explain about [Light Spot Operated] after. Slide-2 Introduction Now,let's start with introduction. I want to talk about Background Solution 1 (Head mouse pointing device, Light Spot Operated Keyboard are developed) Problems (User Interface is not so good) Solution 2 (We have been developing Light Spot Operated Mouse) Procedure Summary Slide-3 Background People with physical disabilities such as cervical spinal-cord injured (SCI) need assistive devices to use a personal computers (PC), Because of their physical disabilities, they can't use normal keyboard and mouse. Although, a mouse or head stick is a simple assistive tool for them, frequent use of these tools might cause additional disabilities or failure of other body parts. Other devices such as Head mouse pointing devices are now commercially available. And we have been developing a light spot operated keyboard (LSOK) for SCI PC-users since 1989. Slide-4 Practical use of LSOK Light Spot Operated Keyboard is keyboard emulator. It has light sensor in each key on a keyboard. The SCI user puts a small laser pointer on a sun visor. Then he points the laser pointer at the light sensor, illuminated key is input to the PC. He can use his PC without moving his limbs. Slide-5 Head mouse pointing device As you know head mouse pointing devices performs a mouse operation by linking users head movement with mouse cursor movement. Slide-6 One of the Head Mouse Pointing Devices (Tracker-One) is Set up and fitted to SCI PC User. In this slide The white square is the PC screen. The red line is his head moving area. The mouse moving area is described as a pink dotted line. In this situation, the mouse movement matches with his head movement. But when he uses this device for a long time, the mouse moving area will shift little by little (orange dotted line) and the mouse cursor won't move to the periphery of the screen. To improve this situation, he should move his head more widely (white dotted line), but he can't move any wider because of his disabilities Slide-7 Practical use of LSOK So he moves the mouse cursor by illuminating a laser light onto a light sensor that corresponds to each shift direction. When he wants to move the mouse cursor to the left, he should spot the left side sensor. Slide-8 User Interface But, User interface is not so good, because depending on the mouse position the direction of the head and the line-of sight does not match. In this case, he wants to move the mouse cursor to left, the direction of his head is left, but the direction of his line-of-sight is right. Slide-9 User Interface In order to improve the user interface, we have been developing a light-spot operated mouse. This system detects laser illuminated points on the liquid crystal display (LCD) with image processing software. And the system moves the mouse cursor to that point. If the mouse cursor moves to laser illuminated point, the direction of his head and line-of-sight will match, and therefore it will be more comfortable for him. Slide-10 System arrangement The present system is an image processing and mouse cursor movement application. Left part of this slide is side view of the system. When the laser illuminated point on the LCD is detected, the mouse cursor will follow that point. Slide-11 System arrangement2 Sometimes at certain angles, the laser light is reflected to outside. Then one camera system will not detect the laser illuminated point. Therefore, we have two USB cameras set in front of the display. This will mean that at least one of the cameras will detect reflected laser light. Then uploaded images from two USB cameras are composed into one and processed. Slide-12 Procedure:detection of illuminated point Next I'll explain how the system detects the illuminated point. A polarizing filter is incorporated into the LCD on the PC. When an image is viewed through a PL filter rotated 90 deg, only the LC frame appears black, and therefore it is easily detected. Slide-13 Procedure: detection of illuminated point Moreover, the illuminated point appears as a bright point on the black LC frame. In this slide, a illuminated point is detected at bottom left of LC frame, and the mouse cursor will move to the illuminated point. Slide-14 Video 1 This is a video that shows how to detect the LCD frame and the laser illuminated point. The left side PC is main PC This is extended LCD. Images are captured from two USB cameras. And now the PL filter is rotated from 0 deg to 90 deg. So only LC frame appears black. Now we are setting up the threshold for noise reduction. Slide-15 Video 2 This is the laser pointer. The illuminated point is on the left side and the bright point appears on the left side of the LC frame (red square) So operator clicks [start button], and select [program], [Internet Explorer] And he does minimize, maximize and close. Slide-16 Summary In this system, as the mouse moves to the laser illuminated point Gain adjustment that is needed with Tracker-One doesn't required The user can look directly at the point in which he wants the cursor to go. We have evaluated this system with users Details are described in the proceedings. And it is proved, the mouse moves faster than the light sensor type in LSOK system. Main problems are Optimal setting of the USB cameras can't be completed in a short time (It will take at least 5 or 10 minutes, sometime it takes more). Appropriate threshold settings are needed. So, we want to improve more and brush up this system.