Young miners create technology that allows mouse control … – Estado de Minas

The idea of ​​controlling a computer mouse only with the movements of the eyeball is something that seems incredible for anyone, but for people who suffer from some form of paralysis, as victims of quadriplegics and locked-in syndrome, is the kind of technology that changes lives.

Certainly that’s what Yan Santos, then a student of the technical course of biomedical equipment Cefet-MG, he thought when he saw a TV report showing the daily life of paralyzed people. “It was when I had the idea Eye Mouse in early 2014. People who were paralyzed, either by an accident or physical disabilities, suffer an immense difficulty communicating,” says Yan, now 19.

At the time he was still considering themes for your work completion of the technical course. He took the idea to his colleague Nayalla Caroline, who embraced the project with everything and together, sank in the polls to enable the product. “There is a power difference between the eyelid and the cornea. With electrodes in place of the face, we can capture this signal and understand the movement that the eye of the person is doing,” said Nayalla, now 20. “The equipment we have developed allows anyone to control a mouse with only this movement,” he added.

The duo joined the friends Daniel Lott and Marcus Tullius to form the Eyesignal, a startup dedicated to this technology. Today, there are already some solutions that allow something like, either with tracking the retina by cameras or infrared. But while the former is inaccurate and requires a bright room that can overshadow the user, the second is not a time of fast response and can damage vision. “The novelty is based on the fact that there is no device that allows efficient use of a computer for people with severe disabilities to mobility at an affordable price to all audiences,” explains Marcus Tullius. “We talked to some doctors and they identified the difficulty of treating people in this situation because communication is very difficult and limited,” added Yan.

Technology, who was born in Minas Gerais, you can completely change the lives of thousands of people worldwide very soon. “Our product is geared toward people with disabilities, especially those with diseases such as Entrapment Syndrome, the Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and quadriplegia in general. They have good cognitive ability, However, the fact of not move and, in most cases, does not speak, fail to communicate with people and therefore interact with the world ‘external’. The Eye Mouse is a tool to assist effectively in communication of people with family members and with all the medical staff who treat them, reducing the time to diagnosis by physicians and hence assisting in the physical and psychological treatment of these patients “, explained Daniel.

“Is it possible for this individual to communicate by computer, access social networks, writing … we think that in the future she can go to college the distance, for example,” he says enthusiastically Nayalla. “It is also a tool for medical and psychological treatment,” he adds.

startup Eyesignal was accelerated in Lemonade, acceleration program that is in BH. “The Lemonade was for us a startup consolidation program. Through this program, we were able to understand how business and identify what was our position on the market in which we operate,” said Yan.