SBIR Phase II: Open Hardware and Software Platform to Enable Control of IoT Devices for People with Disabilities

这项小型企业创新研究第二期项目旨在改善残疾人士的辅助设备。到2022年，辅助技术产业预计将达到24亿美元，到2027年，全球家庭康复市场预计将超过2250亿美元。该项目提出了一种新颖的硬件和软件平台，使PwD完全控制消费产品，包括游戏机，智能家居设备，无人机以及商业和设计软件。该系统建立在一个新的终端用户开发（EUD）架构上，该架构支持可访问性、物联网、游戏、物理治疗、工业自动化和其他涉及用户控制电子系统的领域的应用。最初的申请将针对5-18岁的脑瘫（CP）儿童，但后来的申请将包括身体残疾的成年人和老龄化人口。这将减少残疾人士克服接触障碍所需的时间和资源，从而为他们的社交、教育、娱乐、就业和独立创造新的机会。这个项目的智力价值在于推进了一个支持即插即用设备兼容性的系统，开发人员的反馈表明，在实现可访问性用例方面，在最先进的技术上有了一个数量级的改进（快了45倍）。该项目将支持为非技术用户研究和设计一个视觉用户界面，使他们能够轻松地为日常应用配置设备，以及一个视觉编辑器，允许业余爱好者和工程师实现更苛刻的可访问性用例，在一所针对CP儿童的学校的用户反馈指导下，与临床和用户体验（UX）研究人员合作。对于可访问性用例，与现有的替代方案相比，预计该系统将在开发时间上实现超过两个数量级的改进（最多快250倍）。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project improves assistive devices for people with disabilities (PwD). The assistive technology industry is projected to reach $2.4 billion in 2022, and the home rehabilitation market is expected to exceed $225 billion globally by 2027. This project advances a novel hardware and software platform to give PwD full control of consumer products, including game consoles, smart home devices, drones, and business and design software. The system builds on a novel end-user development (EUD) architecture which supports applications in accessibility, IoT, gaming, physical therapy, industrial automation, and other domains involving user-controlled electronic systems. The initial application will be for children with cerebral palsy (CP) ages 5-18, but later applications include adults with physical disabilities, and the aging population. This will reduce time and resources needed for PwD to overcome access barriers, thus creating new opportunities for socialization, education, entertainment, employment, and independence. The intellectual merit of this project is to advance a system to support plug-and-play device compatibility, with developer feedback indicating over an order of magnitude improvement on the state-of-the-art (45 times faster) for implementing accessibility use cases. This project will support the research and design of a visual user interface for non-technical users to enable them to easily configure their devices for everyday applications, as well as a visual editor to allow hobbyists and engineers to implement more demanding accessibility use cases, under guidance from user feedback at a school for children with CP in collaboration with clinical and user experience (UX) researchers. The system is anticipated to achieve over two orders of magnitude improvement in development time (up to 250 times faster) for accessibility use cases compared to existing alternatives.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.