General Information

Serial #

N/A

Part Number

5

Total Parts

5

AKA

N/A

Patents

N/A

General Description

Synthetic casing and cord covering with metal electronics. Principalement en synthetique avec des éléments électroniques en métal.

Dimensions

Note: These reflect the general size for storage and are not necessarily representative of the object's true dimensions.

Length

22.0 cm

Width

11.0 cm

Height

4.5 cm

Thickness

N/A

Weight

N/A

Diameter

N/A

Volume

N/A

Lexicon

Group

Medical Technology

Category

Assistive technologies

Sub-Category

N/A

Manufacturer

AKA

Unknown

Country

Unknown

State/Province

Unknown

City

Unknown

Context

Country

Canada

State/Province

Ontario

Period

ca. 2007-2015

Canada

The Historical Assessment on medicine entitled, “Technological Innovations in Canadian Medicine 1950 – 1980” defines disabilities as “affecting mobility, sensory systems, or the intellect.” The HA notes that Canada was one of the first nations to entrench equal rights for people with disabilities, in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (as part of the Constitution Act of 1982) and briefly traces Canadian efforts in improving the lives of people with disabilities. This document also references the National Research Council’s involvement in supporting these types of efforts. In the 1950s and 1960s, the NRC funded a number of biomedical engineering projects to improve technology for people with disabilities. Later, in 1985, the NRC created a company that researched and marketed assistive devices, particularly computing and communication aids. The Nouse technology was originally developed at the National Research Council of Canada by Dr. Dmitry Gorodnichy. His group was involved in vision-based robotic arm tracking for the Canadarm and they developed a Video Recognition System that became the first in Canada, and one of the first in the world, with the focus on developing technologies for real-time automated understanding of video data. In 2007 Dr. Gorodnichy founded a company called IVIM Inc. and licensed the Nouse technology from NRC. The main focus of company's work is to support and further develop the Nouse. The Bruyere Research Institute, a partnership of Bruyere Continuing Care and the University of Ottawa, has been a key partner in assisting with the development of Nouse. Nouse technology has also been approved by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Care Assistive Devices Program.

Function

Converts light energy passing through the lens into digital, electrical signals. These are processed into moving or still images by software in a personal computer. This example was used as the input for the interface of the Nouse software to allow an individual to navigate a computer interface hands-free. Convertit l'énergie lumineuse passant à travers l'objectif en signaux numériques. Ceux-ci sont traités en images mobiles ou fixes par un logiciel sur un ordinateur personnel. Cet exemple a été utilisé comme entrée pour l'interface du logiciel Nouse pour permettre à un individu de naviguer dans une interface d'ordinateur mains libres.

Technical

The concept of “assistive technology” was originally associated with mobility aids but has expanded to include devices and protocols to promote improved perception, mobility, and communication. Nouse, which stands for Nose as Mouse, is the name of the perceptual vision technology which enables vision-based hands-free interaction with a computer. The system takes a video sequence as an input, and splits it into the channels corresponding to the motion, colour and intensity components of video. The system begins by performing face segmentation and detection tasks which enables the software to estimate where the face is in the video. Once a face has been detected, the user is required to manually choose the features he/she wants to be tracked. This is called ‘stereo-tracking’ and the software makes use of the convex-shape of the nose in order to allow 3D face-tracking with the aid of ordinary web-cameras. In an article about the development and implementation of Nouse, authors Gorodnichy and Roth argue that it is this ‘stereo-tracking’, and its applications, that enables Nouse to be so user friendly. The video is processed at the 160 x 120 resolution. This resolution allows one to perform video processing in real-time and is quite sufficient for many face processing tasks. The Nouse Cursor is similar to the standard mouse arrow and allows the user access to any area of the screen. The cursor can be customized in size, color, speed and countdown time. The cursor can even show the user’s face and use sound to enable/disable. Nouse has over 40 settings that can be easily modified to accommodate a user’s preference. Users can change settings related to head range of motion, visual ability, communication skills, method of interaction with the computer and cognitive skill.

Area Notes

Unknown

Details

Markings

On the manufacturer's sticker: "NEXXTECH/ Model No.: 2516523D/ Complies with Canadian/ ICES class B/ Made in China/ 06A13 FCC"

Missing

Appears complete

Finish

Black synthetic casing, mount and cord with black hook and loop fastener and a silver USB end on the cord. On the inside of the mount is a black manufacturer's sticker with white text. Extérieur, support, cordon et fermeture autoagrippante noir, un connecteur de couleur argentée et une étiquette noire et blanche.

Decoration

N/A