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InnovatIon
iR Remote contRols
Ray of hope for cerebral palsy patients
imagine not being able to control your body movements. this is the blaze
cerebral palsy patients battle with day-in and day-out. cepal, an infrared-based
remote control developed by Dhirubhai ambani institute of information and
communication technology, can now reduce their woes
Vanisha Joseph
Cerebral palsy is a disorder affecting
one’s ability to move
and maintain posture. Recent
estimates reveal that India has more
than four million cases of cerebral
palsy, including over 200 children born
affected every day.
Numerous assistive technology devices,
ranging from electronic communication
boards with pictures representing
an individual’s daily needs to electronic
speech synthesisers, have been designed
to help individuals communicate easily
and perform daily tasks. However, most
devices need to interface to a computer
that is yet to penetrate every Indian
household, leaving communication to
perform day-to-day tasks an everyday
battle for most patients.
CePal, an infrared-based remote
control developed by Dhirubhai
Ambani Institute of Information and
Communication Technology (DA-
IICT), Gandhinagar, and now backed
by National Trust (an autonomous
organisation of the Ministry of Social
Justice and Empowerment in India),
has finally won this losing battle for
cerebral palsy patients.
This lightweight, low-cost device
worn on the wrist, hand or head allows
people affected with cerebral palsy to
operate remote-controlled electronic
devices like TV, air-conditioner, lights
and fans.
“We took advantage of the fact
that most equipment today come with
IR remote control. We used the IR receiver
built into the device and directly
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Cepal, worn on the wrist, hand or head, allows people affected with cerebral palsy to operate remotecontrolled
electronic devices
operated it from ‘CePal.’ Thereafter,
we directly generated the IR control
signal needed by the device receiver to
operate them; avoiding any intermediate
device to act as a gateway. CePal
by itself detects and differentiates the
optimal tilt, thereby controlling the
device. The device allows patients to
switch on/off lights and fans, change
the TV channel or volume, etc by
movement,” says Prabhat Ranjan, professor,
embedded systems and sensor
networks, DA-IICT.
CePal uses a 2D accelerometer sensor
(MMA6270QT) to detect motion. The
detected movement is then sent to the
analogue-to-digital conversion (ADC)
pin of an Atmel ATMega32 microcontroller
chip. Thereafter, the microcontroller
maps digital values from the ADC to
IR control signals. The IR signals generated
depend upon the IR protocol of the
target device, the direction of the tilt and
the action to be performed based on the
requirement of the patient.
a cut above the rest!
Started as a project by two students,
Ramya and Pallavi, who wanted to
work on assistive technology for the
physically challenged, CePal has taken
its first step in becoming the hope for
cerebral palsy patients at Sparsh Pediatric
Neuro Developmental Therapy
Clinic in Ahmedabad. It is being used
on cerebral palsy patients and being
constantly improved based on the
feedback.
But, what makes CePal score over
other assistive technologies? It is a
complete solution, giving it an edge
over its competitors. “Because of their
complexity and huge prices, most
existing devices are out of reach of the
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InnovatIon
general population,” says professor
Ranjan, confident of conquering all the
previous limitations.
A complete solution. Taking advantage
of MEMS technology-based
accelerometer, CePal senses movements
with high accuracy. “We kept
in mind that cerebral palsy patients do
not have very fine control over movements.
We put logic in the firmware
to detect the tilts,” explains professor
Ranjan. Considering each patient’s
movement capability and behavioural
pattern may differ, CePal is also able
to tune parameters to match needs.
“CePal provided flexibility in firmware
to adjust to the needs, making it easy to
be customisable at the user’s end,” says
professor Ranjan.
Also, a work in progress would map
the user-generated sound to meaningful
voice outputs. A microphone is attached
to the device that sends the sound input
to the central processing unit via a
wireless link, which is then mapped to
prerecorded voice and corresponding
meaningful response to be fed as the
output to the speaker.
Cost-effective. CePal is much
cheaper than other assistive technology
products in the market. Use of the
latest hardware components, including
MEMS-based sensors, has helped to
minimise the number of components,
reducing the overall costs. The use
of Open Source technology has also
made CePal cost-effective. “We used
Open Source embedded system development
tools and all development is
done on Linux platform. In particular,
we used GNU GCC cross compilers for
firmware development, which helped
to cut costs,” says professor Ranjan.
Easy to use. Usability of the device
is of paramount importance for cerebral
palsy patients and CePal ensures
ease of use with its light weight. “We
have used recent developments in
technology to keep the weight low.
The use of a microcontroller helped to
reduce the component count. Further,
the complete architecture is designed
on a light-weight PCB to facilitate the
user in using it without any hassle,”
says professor Ranjan.
Road ahead
National Trust will test CePal on a
large scale in various parts of India. It
has already won the HP Innovate Award
in 2009. Professor Ranjan and National
Trust hope to take CePal to the next
level, making it the guiding light for
aged people.
“We are looking at making CePal
of great assistance to old people facing
difficulty in the movement of limbs
and people suffering from arthritis, paralysis
and other physical impairments
like carpal tunnel syndrome caused by
excessive use of keyboard and mouse,”
says professor Ranjan.
The author is a business correspondent at EFY
Bengaluru
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