Hard At Work and Play in Center For Really Neat Research
By William Kates
Associated Press Writer
Syracuse, NY - Once upon a time there was a Center for Really Neat Research, where
widgiteers, cyber elves, and power nerds conjured Totally Neat Gadgets and NeatTools.
Through their magic inventions, the voiceless were able to talk; the motionless able
to play games. The world became a better place.
But this is no fairy tale. This is reality at the unconventional Center for Really Neat
Research at Syracuse University, where imaginative thinking, cutting-edge research,
uncommon resourcefulness and entrepreneurial spirit have been brought together under one
unusual roof for social good.
The center's work is focused on finding new paths for communication between severly disabled
humans and computers, and to do it inexpensively. The center also is applying its new
technologies to telemedicine and education.
"We are giving the disabled the ability to control video games, to operate remote-controlled cars.
We are really extending them beyond typing on the computer and communicating, which is the
ultimate point for their educational development," said David J. Warner, the center's founder
and guiding spirit.
"For their personal psychosocial development we are making sure they can have access to what
other people have access to," said Warner. He has developed an international reputation for
the work he did with children with disabilities at Loma Linda University Medical Center in
California.
"If people can blink their eyes, then we can make an eye-blinking detector. If they can
wiggle their cheeks, we can make a cheek-wiggler detector," said Warner, a one-time Army drill
instructor who later became disenchanted with "the suits" in the business world and
metamorphosed into a free-spirited "rock 'n' roll scientist."
The devices are created by current and former students at the one-of-a-kind live-in center
- which Warner calls the world's first "cyberarium" - using recycled toys, spare parts
scanvenged at garage sales and junk-yards and low-priced components unearthed at discount and
electronic supply stores.
Proof of the budding scientists' radical ingenuity is everywhere throughout the center, a four-
story, 20-bedroom mansion that was once a fraternity house and sits inconspicuously on the
fringe of the Syracuse campus.
Telvisions swing out from remote-controlled metal extension arms. Leather bucket seats and
recliners dangle from the ceiling on bungee cords and serve as balcony seating for the
computer/video projector suspended overhead. Elevated computer cubicles are secured to the
ceiling and appear to float in midair. A climbing wall rises from the lobby to the top floor.
"If you hope to create new devices for people with disabilities who perceive the world
differently ... you have to approach your work differently," said Matt Carbone, an
industrial design graduate from Fitchburg, Mass., and one of nearly a dozen students
who live at the cyberarium rent-free in exchange for their intellectual inventiveness,
productivity and commitment.
The low-tech contrivances built by the students are augmented by the advanced software
and hardware developed by Warner and continually upgraded at the center.
Five years ago, at Loma Linda, Warner became frustrated with existing technologies as
he tried to overcome the physical barriers that kept severly disabled children from
interacting with computers.
"I had no way to manipulate software to make it functionally specific for the patient,"
said Warner.
So Warner and his colleagues whipped up Neat software and TNG's - which stands for Totally
Neat Gadgets and is pronounced "things."
The Neat system was designed to be more flexible and cheaper than the existing technology,
which at the time cost $20,000. Reincarnated since then as NeatTools, the software can
be programmed to accept almost any input or output device.
The TNG's are generic interface devices. The latest version, TNG-3, has sixteen channels
and contains a micro-controller circuit chip - a sort of computer on a tiny chip - and
can receive both digital and analog signals. TNG's capture signals created by body
movements, such as blinking eyes or twitching cheek muscles, and then convert them into a
stream of data that the NeatTools software understands and translates into computer
commands.
The TNG-3 is made for less than $100.
"It's always been our motto to make it so Wal-Mart and Radio Shack-level technology can
be used. It doesn't help anyone to come up with a $10,000 or $20,000 solution," Warner
said. "The disabled are a population, not a market."
With TNG's and NeatTools, the disabled can move objects around on a computer screen, play
video games, operate radio-controlled toys and access the internet.
"It can be anything, and we are only beginning to realize its full potential," said
Edward Lipson, a Syracuse biophysics professor and a principal collaborator at the center
who designed TNG-3.
During its two-year existence, the center has focused on a select number of challenging
cases, rather than spreading itself thin, said Lipson.
"When you see these technologies, yes, we primarily have developed them for specific people,
but we've looked at the phenomena of human computer interaction and consider other potential
applications," said Lipson.
The center is self-contained, next-century development complex. Submitting research papers
for review is an afterthought and there's no waiting for executive decisions to embark
on a project. It's a trial-and-error laboratory where results are immediate.
The basement contains the workshops where the cyber-elves, widgiteers, and power-nerds turn
chaos into order. A storage area is cluttered with an assortment of electronic and hardware
odds and ends that provide the inventors a quick-access supply store.
Around the corner is the electronics and computer workshop, where decks of equipment rise
from the floor to the ceiling. Through another door is a fully-equipped industrial design
shop. Multimedia production rooms are interspersed throughout the house.
Thanks to Carbone, there are computer hookups in every room, linked with a 2 mbps connection
to the computers at the nearby Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, where Syracuse
scientists are involved in developing advanced communication technology.
"We wanted to bring it together in a package rather than a cluster of neat projects all in
one geographic location," said Warner. We can become what we need to become to take
advantage of opportunities that arise in our presence."