C.G. Pinheiro Jr. and A.O. Andrade (Brazil)
tor impairment
Patients with severe motor impairments, victims of stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal cord injury are pre vented from using standard devices for computer access, demanding alternative channels and methods of communi cation. Several biosignals have been employed as control signals, such as electroencephalographyin brain–computer interfaces, electro-oculography in gaze-based devices and electromyography. One of the most common and desir able functions to be performed is cursor control, which has been successfully achieved by means of strategies based on biological signals analyses. In order to obtain the com plete emulation of a standard mouse, the single-click and double-click actions are desirable functionalities. In this study, the implementation of such actions is executed by the analysis of the electromyographic signal recorded from the Frontalis muscle. Muscle activity is discriminated from noise and this information is used to feed a state-machine that in turn decides which action is intended. The method uses an adaptive threshold, which offers freedom for the selection of the parameters of the system. The rate of suc cessfully detected commands found was up to 100% for the single-click and 92% for the double-click. The time re sponse found was below 300 ms suggesting real–time im plementation is feasible.
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