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About AsTeRICS

photo gallery of Exelon MouseAsTeRICS - 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.