[MOD]

My friends daughter has a c1 c2 injury. She is 7 now and was in a car collision when she was a year and a half old. There has been some red tape and delays on getting her other AAC devices. So my friends get me on this project. I am just an Industrial Designer and am getting a handle on the problem. I have another friend at the Speach Pathology department here at University of Tennessee who has been showing me the existing technologies. It is all a bit pricey and then I remembered seeing the Johnny Lee vids on Youtube and thought why don't I try to adapt the Wiimote and some IR goggles for head tracking and see if I can't just beat the system in speed and price. I also have colleagues who are remarkable programmers and we will be writing some custom software before too long I imagine. So today I got a Wiimote and will be hooking it up to a PC and testing out the virtual reality end of the head tracking. I'm pretty excited about all this and was wondering if anyone else has tried to go this route. Ultimately I believe I can create a projected keyboard and get her to use the head tracking to type and a haptic button for her to push (somehow). I am envisioning a tiara with two LEDs and a button on the back.
Maddison's father will be bringing me her old chair over tonight to use as a chasis to build out the computer system and.... whatever comes next.
Ok I'm not completely naive. I know we are a long way from keyboard input. Her education is behind schedule due in part to delays from the bloody insurance companies. She is clearly a smart girl, very precocious and just a little boxed in right now. My girl friend is a teacher and has started working with her to get some communication going on. We have been documenting it on video. It is my plan to post all this to Youtube after I have something interesting to show so stay tuned. Anyone out there who has become frustrated with existing games because of the inability to push a button should pay attention. The Wiimote is a pretty cool input device and can be adapted to work with a PC so the sky is the limit with what we should be able to do with it. My first thought for Maddison is to get her to play Katamari. I is a fun kids game that I am reasonably sure I can get to work with the head tracking alone. If you haven't seen this go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw...feature=channel
What is really exciting is that so far I have spent about $50 and will probably have $100 in to hardware by the time I am done. The eye tracking system that is "on the way" is $10,000. Ooooh, ouch. This family is insured so no big deal right? Wrong, it has taken two years of red tape so far.... Not good for early brain development to go with out an input device for too long I suspect.
Ok before I start ranting I should shut up and ask for any advice or help that anyone out there has to offer. If you have tried this before and have a road map I'd love to see it. All of our work here will be available to anyone as soon as I can put it into a logical presentation. We are going to have blast making this stuff. Hope it can help some others too. You can right me back at mod.design@gmail.com if you have some good advice or questions. Thanks for reading.
MOD