A master thesis from Aalborg University
HAMAC: Home Assistive and Mobile Access Controller
Author(s)
Term
10. Term
Education
Publication year
2010
Submitted on
2012-02-14
Abstract
Nowadays, more and more standard protocols enable consumer electronic devices to communicate together, and even to control each other. This offers new possibilities to the users, as they are now able to control several devices from another. Such functionalities are interesting to quadriplegic people, to whom the electronic world could bring more independence and thus a better quality of life. However, most interfaces between quadriplegic people and the electronic world suffer from limited possibilities and are cosmetically difficult to accept. To address these issues, TKS developed an intra-oral tongue controlled device providing a good hardware interface between the user and the electronic world. Nevertheless, TKS’s system can only control a computer at the time of this writing. This project is intended in evolving TKS’s tongue controlled system, by making it compatible with standard protocols for connectivity to other devices, service discovery and service access. It will also provide efforts to endow the current system with a visual interface, and offer an analysis of the best way to present devices to the user on this interface. During semester 9th, the first part of this project enabled us to design a proof of concept providing a highly interoperable tongue controlled interface for quadriplegic people. This proof of concept is able to take control of Bluetooth enabled computers and Zigbee enabled lights. It was granted an award in France from the association Hanploi in March 2010. The second part of this project focuses on improving this proof of concept on three different axis: energy consumption, security and safety. Our results indicate that, by including a Power Management System in the HAMAC framework, we are able to make the HAMAC platform 2.5 times more energy efficient and the radio chips up to 8 times more energy efficient. The other changes that we applied to the framework enable it to encrypt the data sent over the air by our proof of concept. They also address the safety of specific plug-ins such as a module for controlling a motorized wheelchair.
Documents
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