Abstract
The computer is an important medium that allows people to connect to the internet. However, people with disabilities are unable to use a computer mouse and thus cannot enjoy internet benefits. Nowadays, there are various types of assistive technologies for controlling a computer mouse, but they all have some operational inconveniences. In this paper, we propose an innovative blowing-controlled mouse assistive tool to replace the conventional hand-controlled mouse. Its main contribution is that it uses microphones to induce small signals through the principle of airflow vibration, and it then converts the received signal into the corresponding pulse width. The co-design of software programming enables various mouse functions to be implemented by the identification of the blowing pulse width of multiple microphones. The proposed tool is evaluated experimentally, and the experimental results show that the average identification rate of the proposed mouse is over 85%. Additionally, compared with the other mouse assistive tools, the proposed mouse has the benefits of low cost and humanized operation. Therefore, the proposed blowing control method can not only improve the life quality of people with disabilities but also overcome the disadvantages of existing assistive tools.
Highlights
With the development of computer and internet technology, peoples’ lives have undergone major changes
We propose an identification algorithm to find the maximum blowing pulse width among all the microphones to reduce the mutual interference of multiple microphones; the microcontroller unitunit (MCU) controller can correctly determine the position of the blown microphone
To overcome the operating drawbacks and limitations of conventional mouse assistive tools, a hardware-based blowing signal processing technology has been proposed in this paper to help people with disabilities, especially paralyzed people, to control a computer mouse
Summary
With the development of computer and internet technology, peoples’ lives have undergone major changes. People greatly rely on the use of computers and the internet in their work, information acquisition, shopping, or even entertainment, all of which deeply affect their daily lives. According to the statistics of the World Health Organization, there are about 250,000~500,000 people with disabilities caused by accidents or illnesses every year. Their daily lives almost completely rely on family care, and it is more difficult for them to operate computers using conventional hand-controlled mice. To improve the life quality of people with disabilities, it is necessary to design a humanized mouse assistive tool [1]
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