Towards standardisation of communication and control systems for motor impaired people

Abstract

Research and development of communication and control devices for physically handicapped people has expanded steadily in the recent past, mainly owing to technological reasons, in the absence of any effort towards standardisation. The result is a large variety of incompatible devices. A unitary conceptual framework is then necessary, in order to define standard harware and software modules from which different types of communication/control systems can be configured. As a contribution to this problem, we first analyse the nature of the communication problem, pointing out the basic set of variables that describe it. A classification is made of communication/control systems, command devices and functions. A general interaction scheme is suggested that relies on a command language. Different selection modes are discussed, together with some implementation topics. Finally, a preliminary experience on a prototype (Logos project) based on a commercial computer terminal is presented.