Story by William Preston
wpreston@syr.edu
Phone: 443-4152
February 22, 1999
Contacts:
"Thing One and Thing Two, they ran up they ran down," wrote Dr. Seuss in the classic The Cat in the Hat. Since a brainstem stroke rendered Eyal Sherman a quadriplegic at age 5, he has not run at all. But TNGs (an abbreviation of "totally neat gadgets" and pronounced "things") 1, 2, and 3-computer interface devices designed and built through the Pulsar Project-have given Sherman, now 17, the ability to communicate, participate more at school, and navigate the World Wide Web.
Other young people with disabilities have also been helped by Pulsar's ongoing research. And now a $40,000 grant from the NEC Foundation of America http://www.nec.com/company/foundation will make possible the next step: nationwide testing of new computer-driven tools for people with disabilities.
Physics professor Edward Lipson and Dr. David Warner, a research associate at the Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC) at SU, are the driving force behind Pulsar http://www.pulsar.org . According to Lipson, Pulsar's mission is to "develop low-cost technology to help people with severe disabilities access information that will make them productive members of the information world."
The grant to Pulsar will enable Lipson and Warner to provide schools and sites in several cities across the United States free TNG interfaces along with sensors and online training information for their free downloadable "NeatTools" software. TNG devices collect such data as facial gestures from the user; the software processes that data for computer control.
"This alpha test is for systems still under development but not yet ready for full-scale dissemination," says Lipson.
Just as computer technology increases the possibility of fortuitous connections between people and ideas, so the history of this project has been constructed of such connections. Lipson was involved with SU's NPAC in 1995 when he met Warner and learned of Warner's pioneering efforts to enable the severely disabled to act and communicate through computer technology. Lipson knew Eyal Sherman and his family through their shared synagogue, where Sherman's father is the rabbi.
Building on Warner's innovative technology, Lipson, Warner, and their team developed a chin joystick, the NeatTools JoyMouse program, and an array of sensors that monitor Sherman's facial expressions. This computer interface has enabled a young man who can neither move his head nor vocalize to use standard computer technology to type text, surf the web, send e-mail, and generate speech.
"Eyal and his family have achieved independence using this system," Lipson says. "His mother is able to set up the hardware and software in a matter of minutes."
This groundbreaking work now enjoys support from the NEC Foundation of America, which learned of Pulsar's work through a local NEC representative who attended a 1998 presentation on campus.
NEC Foundation of America was established in 1991 and endowed at $10 million by NEC Corporation and its United States subsidiaries and affiliates. The foundation supports programs with national reach and impact in science technology education, principally at the secondary level, and/or efforts to apply technology to assist people with disabilities.
"NEC Foundation of America complements NEC's corporate philosophy of advancing society through technology and enabling individuals to fully develop their human potential," says Sylvia Clark, executive director for NEC Foundation of America. "We see few demonstrations of the meaning of those words that are quite as dramatic as the Pulsar Project.
"Pulsar's work to give the means of expression to its clients-and to many more people in the future-opens possibilities for these individuals and deepens the mutual understanding of everyone involved in the project."
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