Power to the Disabled

By Philip Faflick

Micros help the handicapped help themselves

The advent of inexpensive computer power is altering offices, factories, schools and homes. But nowhere has that power made such dramatic contributions as it has in the world of the physically handicapped. Today paraplegics, quadriplegics, amputees and cerebral palsy victims are using computers to perform tasks that once seemed beyond their capabilities. Here are two young people whose daily lives have been transformed by the new technology.

Rob Marince had a bad accident when he was 17 years old. He was riding in a car that skidded over a patch of ice and was thrown out the" passenger door and into the path of an oncoming truck. He woke up two days later in Pittsburgh's Allegheny General Hospital, a tube in his throat and a machine pumping air down his trachea. Rob had lost the use of his arms and legs, and his lungs were paralyzed as well. The doctors said that he would spend his life on his back, unable to perform the simplest tasks. But as his oldest brother, Gary, 27, recalls it, "Robbie never accepted .that he'd be in a wheelchair forever. And neither did I."

Thanks to Gary, a communications major from Penn State, Rob, 23, now lies in his bedroom in Hopewell Township, Pa., at the heart of one of the most sophisticated computer control and communications centers in the U.S. It is a remarkable patchwork of off-the-shelf electronics parts, including a desktop computer, a remote-control video recorder, a scattering of video games and pinball machines, a conference-type telephone system and a backyard antenna big enough to broadcast network-quality television signals. All of it was pieced together during the past five years by Gary and Ted Ruscitti, 29, a high school friend. They plowed through catalogues and hounded manufacturers for $60,000 worth of free components. They also taught themselves everything from computer programming to the arcana of pinball relays. The result is a system that permits Rob to roam the heavens by voice control.

"Satellite search," he says, speaking slowly into a small, gray microphone.

"What satellite do you want?" says a strange voice, sounding like a foreign-language student with a bad cold. It issues from a small Apple II Plus computer named HAL, after the talking machine in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"Satcom F3R," says Rob.

"Yes, master," replies HAL. Outside, on the edge of a tree-lined ravine behind the Marince home, a 13-ft. parabolic dish antenna jolts into motion and begins sweeping the sky. It stops and focuses on a communications satellite orbiting 22,300 miles above the equator.

"What transponder do you want?" the computer asks.

"Atlanta," says Rob. Moments later the TV at the foot of his bed lights up with a news broadcast from Ted Turner's superstation WTBS, beamed via high-earth orbit.

The key to Rob's control center is a small, gray box that sits next to the computer and translates his spoken words into signals the computer can understand. Shortly after the Apple arrived in September 1980, a gift from the manufacturer, Gary and Ted realized that their main problem would be giving Rob complete mastery over the computer. They tried everything from a breath-controlled switch to a 10-in. rod that Rob held in his mouth. Then they learned of a voice-activated input device that could be taught 40 different commands. Within days, they had talked Scott Instruments of Denton, Texas, into donating one of its $990 voice-entry terminals.

Now when Rob says, "Satellite search," the Scott machine takes a numerical snapshot of the sound pattern and compares that picture with patterns Rob has previously recorded. When the machine finds a matching formation, it sends the computer the corresponding command. With some artful jiggering, Gary and Ted have extended HAL'S vocabulary to more than 280 words.

With these commands, Rob can search through the necklace of satellites that rings the earth and pick up any one of 150 TV channels. He can also dial the telephone, adjust the angle of his bed, dim the lights, dictate letters, play video games and write computer programs on the Carnegie-Mellon University computer network in nearby Pittsburgh. Next January he will start taking college-level courses by satellite.

Rob is one of 500,000 Americans suffering from paralysis of two or more limbs. In the past, quadriplegics like Rob were consigned to passive, sedentary lives. Today, with the aid of microcomputers, systems as ingenious as Rob's are getting easier and cheaper to build. "The past few years have witnessed a tremendous increase in individuals and small groups that develop special aids for disabled persons," says Gregg Vanderheiden, director of the Trace Center for the Severely Communicatively Handicapped at the University of Wisconsin. "Microcomputers are making it possible for designers to develop sophisticated electronic aids."

So far, no one has matched the sophistication of Rob's system. "It's | a state-of-the-art application of 2 voice recognition," says an im| pressed Ronald Cole, speech| recognition expert at Carnegie| Mellon. "It is easily the single "most direct example of the technology upgrading someone's life."

For his next project, Gary wants to get his brother hooked up to a robot arm. "Rob can roam around the satellites thousands of miles away," says Gary, "but he still can't pour himself a cup of tea."

"It's all pretty fantastic," says Rob. "If nothing else, it keeps me thinking ahead instead of dwelling on the past."

The ultimate hope of every spinal cord-injury victim is that crippled limbs will work again. That dream seems tantalizingly close for a 22-year-old paraplegic in Dayton. Using a computer-based locomotion system, Nan Davis, a senior at Wright State University, recently stood up in front of television news cameras, took half a dozen halting strides and said with a laugh, "One small step for mankind." Davis has been paralyzed from the rib cage down as a result of an auto crash in 1978, on the night of her high school graduation.

Throughout her programmed "walk" at the Wright State biomedical engineering lab, Davis was bolstered by props. She was strapped to a parachute harness that supported a third of her 130 Ibs., and she gripped a pair of parallel bars as her legs stepped ahead of her down the 10-ft. walkway. Nonetheless, her achievement marked an important development: the marriage of 200-year-old electrical stimulation techniques to today's high-speed computers.

To get Nan going, Dr. Jerrold Petrofsky, director of the lab, taped some 30 electrodes and sensors over the major muscle groups in her legs. Then he instructed a small desktop computer to fire successive bursts of electricity, each carefully orchestrated to trigger the right muscles at the proper time. A feedback system monitored the movements of Davis' ankles, knees and hips, making corrections as necessary.

The resulting movements were crude and jerky. Moreover, extending the program so that Nan can turn, sit, squat or climb steps will pose enormous difficulties. At present, the $200,000 system can only direct one foot to move in front of the other. Before it can be put to practical use, Petrofsky's 150-lb. device must be streamlined and miniaturized. "It's a mass of wires right now," says Wright State Technician Harry Heaton. "But it will eventually be a small microprocessor capable of being implanted pacemaker-style." Petrofsky says his system might be ready for commercialization within a decade. Others in the field find his optimism misleading. Says Dr. Paul Meyer, past president of the American Spinal Injury Association: "Imagine all that went into getting that young woman to take those steps. We've got an extremely long way to go before we can individualize this."

Nan Davis scoffs at critics. She knows she will walk again. "It's definitely going to happen," says she. "What I did proves that it can."

-- By Philip Faflick. Reported by Sheila Gribben/ Chicago and Robert T. Grieves/ New York

With reporting by Sheila Gribben/ Chicago and Robert T. Grieves/ New York

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