Adaptive assistive technologies for people with disabilities

''Assistive technologies'' (AT) have developed rapidly in recent years, allowing people with motor disabilities to live more independent and comfortable lives. Now assistive technology systems that can open a door, turn on a light or connect to the internet at the blink of an eye, a head movement or even a thought, are being made more flexible and customisable for individual users - thanks to the work of EU-funded researchers.

An estimated 2.6 million people in Europe have mobility problems affecting their upper limbs, and around 1.3 million of them require assistive technologies, or the help of human carers, to be able to perform everyday tasks. Across developed countries, the figure rises to 2.5 million. They include people suffering from a range of diseases, including multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, as well as varying degrees of paralysis, among them locked-in syndrome in which a person may only be able to move their eyes.

While many people already make use of assistive technologies -an umbrella term that includes assistive, adaptive and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities -in most cases the systems and applications are designed to perform one specific function or assist someone with a specific form of disability.

''What I would call the "old" AT-market is dominated by isolated applications and devices, each addressing a specific disability or focusing on a specific ability of the user. This is in principle good, since it means that each device can be brilliantly optimised in its functionality,'' explains Stefan Parker, a project coordinator and researcher at KI-I in Austria. ''The trouble is that in most actual use cases these devices only manage to take advantage of a part of the user''s abilities or, in other cases, are not properly adaptable to the user''s needs, leaving him or her with a device that is merely semi-optimal for their use case.''

The problem is that disabilities cannot be categorised. Every person is different and even two people suffering from the same disease will often have very different degrees and types of impairment, or a combination of different disabilities at the same time. And an individual sufferer will usually need systems to be adjusted, or new devices to be used, as their symptoms evolveover time.

In order to address the issue, a consortium of research institutes, universities and private companies from seven countries have developed an affordable and scalable platform to implement AT in a much more personalised and flexible way. Their system, developed over two years in the ''Assistive technology rapid integration and construction set'' (ASTERICS) project with the support of EUR 2.65 million in funding from the European Commission, has already gone into commercial production.And on-going research is set to enhance it further.