Leveraging retained physical capabilities to improve quality of life as assessed by persons with severe motor impairments.

Purpose: The main objective of this article is to present an alternative method of interacting with a computer which empowers persons with very severe motor impairments to leverage retained capabilities in order to independently control parts of their daily lives. The input strategy is based on tiny intentional contractions of a single muscle of choice (requiring a minimum of physical contribution only) which are used as selection markers in the context of scanning.

Method: To demonstrate the usefulness of the idea, two applications (combined in a single software system) have been implemented (initially): a module turning the PC into a Universal Remote Control and a Text-To-Speech module.

Building a computer model of the Haemobear blood pump.

Further development of the Haemobear blood pump requires theoretical predictions of the dynamic behavior of the rotor. These predictions can be used to compare different rotor geometry at desired operating conditions before a prototype is built. The study focuses on a rotor-dynamic model of the rigid rotor with six degrees of freedom (6-DoF), which is implemented using the Matlab-Simulink software package.