ALIAS: A robot controlling system using eye movements

Abstract Disability is a physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities. It hinders some of the tasks that a person can do but it never stops one to be useful and work for the greater good of themselves as well as the society. Our Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has decided to call persons with disability as Divyangans meaning possessed with divinity. When we learn to categorise someone by the quality of work that they can do instead of just looking at the shortcomings, we can never make progress as a society. If we really want to empower divyangans, we need to provide them with equal opportunities for work so that they can show their mettle and stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone.

Introduction In a number of situations, it may be possible where a person is not able to move their body parts as efficiently as possible, but even in a state of paralysis, their brains are not unconscious. Other body functions like eye movements and fingers (in most cases) also work perfectly. Here we propose a novel solution for those who want to productively use their body functionalities. This would really turn out to be an excellent means to break the barrier between disability and unemployment. The foundation of this project is based on controlling a robot that can perform a certain physical task using human body working senses. This would create a progressive positive mindset for divyangans and empower them to fulfill their dreams. The system would make use of three modes: Navigation: For moving a device depending on the direction of the eye movements. Selection: By selecting a specific appliance. Manipulation: For controlling the selected appliance by gazing, blinking gestures, movements etc, at the control panel.

Application Areas This technology is enormously useful in public areas were robots can serve people in daily life. As the robots are being controlled by divyangan, instead of artificial intelligence, the robots can have more realistic interactions and can take dynamic decisions in a path following and in task completion. Waiters in cafes and restaurants. Receptions of companies, institutions. Hospitals in Operation Theatres, ICU etc.

Technicalities In the initial stage of the project, we would be using python libraries and processing power of Raspi for human eye tracking, that controls the robot movements and can give different hard-coded commands using eye blinking. These commands can perform basic tasks from the robot for e.g. pick/drop an object and also it works as a chatbot. Later in the advance model, this robot will be programmed to perform many tasks and will be controlled by human brainwaves for more realistic and dynamic actions.

Built With

• image-processing
• opencv
• python
• raspberry-pi
• robotics