Abstract
Tongue movements usually remain unaffected after spinal cord injury (SCI) on cervical level. Such SCI patients are able to perform voluntary tongue movements that can be detected and utilized for control of assistive technology devices. In this study, we investigated the magnitude of the tongue tip force for different positions of the tongue-palatal contact area and the change of the force during the exertion time. For the experiments we designed a palatal mouthpiece with seven thin-film force sensors. The information from these experiments was used for the development of three tongue control methods (on/off, time-dependent, and force-dependent) that were tested with a mobility assistance robot. Results from the tongue control of the robot showed that the force-dependent control algorithm is most efficient. It allows proportional control of the assistance robot. The user can control easily the direction and the speed of the robot by changing the position and force of the tongue.
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