Paralyzed individuals who feel trapped in their bodies may soon have the opportunity to communicate more easily, thanks to a new non-profit organization inspired by University research.
The organization SpeakYourMind was founded earlier this year by Dan Bacher, a researcher on the University’s BrainGate team that also works to restore communication to paralyzed individuals.
Paralyzed individuals “all had the same fundamental problem,” said Bacher, who is also SpeakYourMind’s executive director. “They couldn’t communicate. ... They couldn’t express themselves.”
Current communication devices designed for paralyzed individuals are prohibitively expensive, and the companies that make them don’t provide substantial customer support, Bacher said.
Bacher said he recognized the need for cheaper and more efficient communication devices through working as a BrainGate researcher for the past decade. The BrainGate team is currently investigating communication devices controlled by neural signals, but that technology is not yet widely available. Bacher said he wanted to create something that incorporated technology already available.
“I started building low cost prototypes,” he said. He would develop them on an individual basis for the specific client, working to “ultra-personalize” each solution, he said.
“SpeakYourMind is just a scaled up version of that” process, he said, adding that the organization relies on volunteers who create individual solutions for each client.
SpeakYourMind uses off-the-shelf hardware such as tablets and inexpensive cameras to build products, Bacher said. This makes them very cheap compared to traditional devices, which can cost around $15,000.
One of the devices the organization created enables people who could only move their eyes to type. The device consists of a small, inexpensive camera attached to a cheap pair of glasses, Bacher said. The camera sends information about eye movements into a computer program, enabling people’s eyes to act like a finger on a touch-screen.
Many Brown and RISD students, in addition to corporate professionals who want to make a difference, currently volunteer for SpeakYourMind, Bacher said.
“I got involved with developing technologies to help people communicate when I was still an undergraduate at Brown,” said Anish Sarma ’12, lead engineer for SpeakYourMind. “And that was probably the most educational experience of my time at Brown.”
Having Brown students work at SpeakYourMind is enriching because it shows them how to organize and structure a non-profit, said Brendan McNally, president and board member of SpeakYourMind and associate director of the C.V. Starr Program in Business, Entrepreneurship and Organizations. It teaches students how to collaborate in teams, find funding and work with volunteers, he added.
Brown students also enjoy seeing the “immediate real world impact” of their work, Bacher said.
Elizabeth Weber ’14 chose to work for SpeakYourMind as her senior capstone project for her Business, Entrepreneurship and Organizations concentration.
“It’s neat to be in the action when this company is just starting up,” Weber said, adding that she is gaining firsthand business experience as she works on crowd-funding campaigns for the company.
“These are the sort of puzzles that make science interesting,” said Mark St. Louis ’15, referring to the problems and design challenges he works on.
Right now, the organization is still in its early start-up phase, serving only a small number of eager clients, Bacher said. In the future, members of the company hope to acquire more funding and reach out to more people, he said.
Their long-term goal is to “build a huge network and organization around personalized technology creation and support” that could serve people all over the country, Bacher added.
“Figuring out how to build this scalable model is our challenge,” he said. “But the success we’ve had from a few of our clients is really promising, and we know if we can do this right, it’s going to grow and help a lot of people.”
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