About AsTeRICS
AsTeRICS - versatile connectivity for any person with disabilities
- control your home appliances
- control PC or mobile phone
- play games
- use one of many sensors
- use your mind with Brain Computer Interfaces
- adaptable
- flexible
AsTeRICS: Assistive Technology Rapid Integration & Construction Set
What is AsTeRICS?
AsTeRICS is intended facilitate access for people with a physical disability to different devices such as personal computers, cell phones and smart home devices via one single system which offers a wide range of different input methods. One input method that works well for a user may later be used in different situations and devices – e.g. same method for controlling the computer’s mouse may be used to operate a PC but also to control their home stereo.
The system’s features include PC input device emulation, game control, environmental control applications and utilization of embedded devices (for example, xxx).
AsTeRICS provides a system for developing user driven AT by combining emerging sensor techniques like Brain-Computer Interfaces (BNCI) and computer vision with basic actuators (like switches, sip/puff sensors, special mice/joysticks, etc.).
System Overview
The AsTeRICS system consists of hardware components and a software framework. The hardware components include:
- The sensor and actuator modules which are needed for the desired input method for the user, for example a camera, simple switch or an infrared remote control device.
- The Communication Interface Modules (CIMs) which provide the necessary interfaces to connect the sensors and actuators to the computing platform.
- A computing platform to run the AsTeRICS software and process sensors and actuators. Although a standard PC, Laptop, Netbook or Tablet computer with the Windows operating system can be used, a dedicated embedded computing hardware has been developed which perfectly fits the requirements of a flexible AT device: the AsTeRICS Personal Platform.
The following figure illustrates the concept.
AsTeRICS can be purchased as a hardware platform with all necessary modules or installed on a standard Windows PC. The software is Open Source and available on the asterics.eu web page.