Bluetooth wireless handset for people with severe motor disabilities: Capstone design project for rehabilitation technology

Even common daily-used devices such as a mobile phone or a remote controller can be a big hurdle for disabled people. As the levels and types of disabilities have a wide variety, it is difficult to expect that devices from mass production are tailored for each disabled person. In this paper, we introduce a capstone design project to develop a Bluetooth wireless handset for people with a motor disability. The handset device should be able to interface with a range of input devices such as a chin switch, a tongue switch, a muscle switch, and so forth, and be able to connect any mobile phones that support Bluetooth. The handset supports making and receiving calls, storage and retrieval of call history, and management of a phone book. All these functionalities can be controlled with a single switch input. As people with a motor disability mostly work with a computer, its speaker and microphone are shared with users´ remote desktop computer. The outcome of the project is submitted to the nationwide Capstone Design Contest in Korea in 2009, and won the Minister Award from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Korea.