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

这个小型企业创新研究第二阶段项目改进了为残疾人(PWD)提供的辅助设备。辅助技术行业预计将在2022年达到24亿美元，到2027年，全球家庭康复市场预计将超过225亿美元。该项目提出了一种新的硬件和软件平台，使PWD能够完全控制消费产品，包括游戏机、智能家居设备、无人机以及商业和设计软件。该系统建立在一种新颖的最终用户开发(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。最初的应用将适用于5-18岁的脑瘫(CP)儿童，但后来的应用包括肢体残疾的成年人和老龄化人口。这将减少残疾人克服获得障碍所需的时间和资源，从而为社会化、教育、娱乐、就业和独立创造新的机会。该项目的智能优点是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，最先进的改进超过了一个数量级(速度提高了45倍)。该项目将支持研究和设计面向非技术用户的可视化用户界面，使他们能够轻松地为日常应用配置他们的设备，以及一个可视化编辑器，使业余爱好者和工程师能够在与临床和用户体验(UX)研究人员合作的CP儿童学校的用户反馈的指导下，实施更苛刻的可访问性用例。与现有的替代方案相比，该系统预计将在可访问性用例的开发时间上实现两个数量级以上的改进(速度最高可快250倍)。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.