The Hackaday Prize is a celebration of the greatest hardware put together by the greatest hackers on the planet. If you go over the entries, you’ll find user interfaces for everything. Need a wheelchair controlled by eye gaze? That won last year. A foot controlled mouse? Done. Need a device to talk to the Internet while you’re in a lucid dream? We’ve seen that.
We’ve seen a lot of really cool, really strange stuff in the Hackaday Prize. We haven’t seen anything like Pallette, a finalist for the Assistive Technologies portion of this year’s prize. It’s a tongue-computer interface. You put Pallette in your mouth, like a retainer, and you can control a computer. Telekinesis with a tongue.
At its most basic level, Pallette is a Bluetooth mouse, hidden away behind the lower jaw. Infrared sensors triangulate the position of the tongue, and a microphone detects the tongue tapping on Pallette. Everything you can do with a mouse can be done with Pallette.
At first glance, Pallette seems to be just a little bit absurd. This idea changes when you see the video the Pallette team produced for the Hackaday Prize finals. Some people can’t use their arms, and for this, Pallette is a godsend. With this, anyone can use a computer, control a Sphero, or fly a drone. It’s a completely novel device that can be used for anything, and an excellent example of what we’re looking for in the Hackaday Prize.
It needs some sort of hydrophobic self sanitising (nano-silver impregnated?) encapsulation and that on-off area needs to be sealed as that cap is a hygiene issue as well as a potential choking hazard.
Not the same as someone borrowing your keyboard. (:
If you don’t have any arms how do you put it in and out of your mouth?
Can that lady use it with her breather tube?
How long did it actually take that guy to click two or three times, it was excruciating enough to watch in sped up time.
I wonder how long you could use this before you get muscle fatigue.
I bet you I’ve never seen the speed someone with disability uses the pc.
apparently they can’t use pc at all otherwise this invention is pointless?
So you think improvements are pointless? …
Best of luck great job.
Still things to work out. But you did ask for more people to help develop it further.
And one thing I am sure will get added is some more smarts into the unit. for self powering to turn on and head motion sensing. and then there are the body censures like temp, heart, blood Pressure and more.
good luck again.
I thing one of the larger companies should be looking at this one for some innovation and put one together. for the mass market but do the real crazy thing of keeping it at a affordable price just for the hell of it.
And most of all still have a open source version for us to expand on.
Crazy hay But I think it would work and we all would benefit.
Teledildonics has taken a great step forward today.
Interesting project!
Many design challenges to overcome I hope you succeed.
Good luck.
Way cool, I’d love to try it. Who knows, maybe it could be useful to anyone. If you don’t eat while on the computer that is.
What, if anything does Hawkins think of this?
Do you mean Stephen Hawking or Ronny Hawkins?
I bet he would of loved to have it 15 years ago. But I think it is a great step forward for now. Good luck again.
HAY if anyone, out there knows him Maybe they could get him to put a comment in here.
Now, that would be a boost….
Great idea
from whati could make out of the video anyway
Some one needs to go in and re-edit the audio dump most or all of the trance music lower the music shunt audio to both speekers for the talking segments and just overall rehash it.
couldn’t make out most of what they were saying specily when the music kicked in (in both speekers unlike the audio and overpowering the speech volume wise)
Ok anoying audio rant over :)
This is an interesting idea i’m guessing it’s a bit like a mouth joy/mouse in it’s base operation wich defenitly has merret and a few use cases i can think of.
might need a mode swich option mixed in.
mode 1 chair mode 2 pc mode three something else.
Maby a side sensor or timed tap or like pushing agenst both sensors till a buzz then holding over till it’s in mode beep or buzz .. wait it’s in the mouth….. ….. …. IN HEAD AUDIO !!!!! ROCK IT MAN!!!\
This is fantastic gadget for a spy! Type down secret message without anyone notice it! And those poison pills you supposed to bite when they capture you – it is so last century! Just apply a very high voltage on the same device and you are done!
Combine this with tongue feedback/monitor and even more people can benefit from this tchnology. Keep up the goo work!
I always liked the idea of having a tongue interface, even for people without handicaps this can be very useful, if you need your hands for something else.
Here are two examples of previous research in this field:
http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~nilanb/papers/IPSN2015a.pdf
http://www.msr-waypoint.net/en-us/um/people/ssaponas/publications/TongueInput_UIST_2009.pdf
I would think a button that activates on ‘bite’ would be easier to use than trying to tap with the tongue.
So a Oakville Girl from Canada is taking your credit.
I saw it on tv today. It was on the news. On chch tv.
Not so nice….