AAC input devices for ALS
A family of prototypes — a brow headband, EOG glasses, and a finger-click keyboard — giving people with ALS a way to type or trigger actions when speech and hand control are gone.
- Devices
- Headband · EOG glasses · finger-click keyboard
- Sensing
- Brow EMG · EOG · mechanical switches
- Link
- BLE (HID / HCI)
- Fabrication
- FDM print · laser cut and engraved
- Context
- HALO — Unbabel Labs
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) work under the HALO project. Each prototype targets a different residual movement someone with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis might still have.
Headband
A band worn on the forehead with dry electrodes over the eyebrow, reading small brow-muscle activity. Built with FDM printing and laser-cut/engraved parts.
Glasses
An eyewear frame with electrodes around the eye that detect voluntary blinks via EOG. A plastic version with conductive electrodes came first; later iterations use laser-cut wood as a carrier while the electrode coupling is worked out.
Finger-click keyboard
Two four-key pads, each operating over BLE in HID/HCI mode. Chorded clicks — combinations of finger presses — map to the whole alphabet, so a full keyboard collapses into eight keys. Enclosures are laser cut and engraved.
This work fed into a 2025 preprint on AI-assisted AAC for ALS patients — see publications.