Stephen Hawking - United Kingdom
Professor Stephen Hawking first tested a NeuroSwitch prototype in 2002 in Cambridge, England.
In March 2003, he asked to have it installed on his powered wheelchair-work station. NeuroSwitch inventor Peter Ford, (far right in photo) and Therapeutic Alliances Inc. CEO James Schorey (far left) and VP of Engineering Mark Britten (second from left), makers of the NeuroEDUCATOR monitor which provides EMG data for NeuroSwitch, met Prof. Hawking and his graduate assistant Tom Pelly (third from left) at Texas A&M University.
Prof. Hawking's first text-to-speech (TTS) statement using NeuroSwitch, less than 30 seconds after it was installed was, "I am always being mistaken for Stephen Hawking".
He currently uses an Infrared Sound Touch switch mounted on his glasses, controlled by his eye blink and cheek movement. NeuroSwitch is designed to work even when these movements are no longer viable.
NeuroSwitch has evolved to a pocket-sized Bluetooth-linked highly versatile AT control system, and comes fully mounted on an Apple MacBook Pro laptop (included).. It can switch faster than 10 times a second or as slowly as needed for easy control of all installed programs from text-to-speech to email to word processing to games.
