Development of Breath Mouse Employing a Gas Flow Sensor: A Data Input Device for People with Severely Disablities
Kitayama Ichiro, Nakagawa Hidoe · IOS Press eBooks · 2013
Breathing is a function that humans can voluntarily control, and thus is an effective means of operating devices such as PCs and ECS. Only the switch function, however, is currently used within a single device. First of all, we conducted experiments using a gas flow sensor, with the initial objective of investigating whether a multichannel control signal based on breath could be acquired. The results show that control that differentiates strong and weak exhalations allows more channels than the two “exhale” and “inhale” channels seen in conventional breath switches. Based on these results, we proposes and developed a new input device that utilizes breathing data from sensors, experimentally investigating the possibility of voluntarily controlling the output of a gas flow sensor through breath control. In addition, an experiment was conducted to determine the effect of incorrect responses to breath direction and strength on operability and mouse cursor movement. The result showed almost no difference between the settings. This research has enabled the development of a device that further extends the functionality of conventional input devices for some people with disabilities.