Development of welfare support-equipment for personal computer operation with head tilting and breathing

This paper describes support-equipment of operating a personal computer for users who have an obstacle on the regions of upper limb. The user wears a head set device with an angle sensor, and holds a plastic pipe connected to a pressure sensor in his or her mouth. Tilting his or her head and breathing are used for a mouse cursor operation and characters input. The voluntary tilt angle range and breath strength are memorized to the controller beforehand, so that operations can be performed without fatigue by considering user's body situations. In mouse operation, cursor can be moved according to the tilt angle, and click operations are executed by breathing in or out to the plastic pipe. In characters input, character board on which LEDs are distributed with a matrix form is prepared for indicating HIRAGANA characters in front of a CRT monitor. Tilting motions change the indicated character and breathing motions can input the selected character.