• Mei-Hua Lee, Rajiv Ranganathan, Florian A Kagerer, and Ranjan Mukherjee.
• Department of Kinesiology, Michigan State University, 308 W Circle Dr Rm 201, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA. mhlee@msu.edu.
• J Neuroeng Rehabil. 2016 Mar 24; 13: 34.

BackgroundThere has been a recent interest in the development of body-machine interfaces which allow individuals with motor impairments to control assistive devices using body movements.MethodsIn this case study, we report findings in the context of the development of such an interface for a 10-year old child with congenital absence of upper and lower limbs. The interface consisted of 4 wireless inertial measurement units (IMUs), which we used to map movements of the upper body to the position of a cursor on a screen. We examined the learning of a task in which the child had to move the cursor to specified targets on the screen as quickly as possible. In addition, we also determined the robustness of the interface by evaluating the child's performance in two different body postures.ResultsWe found that the child was not only able to learn the task rapidly, but also showed superior performance when compared to typically developing children in the same age range. Moreover, task performance was comparable for the two different body postures, suggesting that the child was able to control the device in different postures without the need for interface recalibration.ConclusionsThese results clearly establish the viability and robustness of the proposed non-invasive body-machine interface for pediatric populations with severe motor limitations.

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