Hangue Park and Jeonghee Kim won the Best Demonstration Award at the 2012 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference, held November 28-30 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Both Mr. Park and Ms. Kim are Ph.D. students in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where they work in the GT-Bionics Lab.

They, along with their Ph.D. advisor and ECE Associate Professor Maysam Ghovanloo, received the award for the paper entitled "Intraoral Tongue Drive System Demonstration." The Tongue Drive System (TDS) is a wireless and wearable assistive technology that allows individuals with severe physical disabilities access their environment via their voluntary tongue emotion. In this demonstration, the wireless operation of the intraoral Tongue Drive System (iTDS) was presented along with the TDS universal interface, interacting with both a computer and a smartphone (iPhone). By placing a small magnet at seven pre-defined command positions on the iTDS dental retainer, visitors were able to see the issued commands on the iPhone screen. The setup helped visitors understand how the TDS converts free tongue movements to user-defined commands, which could then be used to dial a phone number, play a game, or control other devices via the iPhone’s Wi-Fi interface.

Georgia Tech will be the host institution for IEEE BioCAS in 2015. For more information, contact Dr. Ghovanloo at 404-385-7048, mgh@gatech.edu.