About AsTeRICS

AsTeRICS - versatile connectivity for any person with disabilities

control your home appliances
control PC or mobile phone
play games
use one of many sensors
use your mind with Brain Computer Interfaces
adaptable
flexible

AsTeRICS: Assistive Technology Rapid Integration & Construction Set

What is AsTeRICS?

AsTeRICS is intended facilitate access for people with a physical disability to different devices such as personal computers, cell phones and smart home devices via one single system which offers a wide range of different input methods. One input method that works well for a user may later be used in different situations and devices – e.g. same method for controlling the computer’s mouse may be used to operate a PC but also to control their home stereo.

The system’s features include PC input device emulation, game control, environmental control applications and utilization of embedded devices (for example, xxx).

AsTeRICS provides a system for developing user driven AT by combining emerging sensor techniques like Brain-Computer Interfaces (BNCI) and computer vision with basic actuators (like switches, sip/puff sensors, special mice/joysticks, etc.).

System Overview

The AsTeRICS system consists of hardware components and a software framework. The hardware components include:

The sensor and actuator modules which are needed for the desired input method for the user, for example a camera, simple switch or an infrared remote control device.
The Communication Interface Modules (CIMs) which provide the necessary interfaces to connect the sensors and actuators to the computing platform.
A computing platform to run the AsTeRICS software and process sensors and actuators. Although a standard PC, Laptop, Netbook or Tablet computer with the Windows operating system can be used, a dedicated embedded computing hardware has been developed which perfectly fits the requirements of a flexible AT device: the AsTeRICS Personal Platform.

The following figure illustrates the concept.

AsTeRICS can be purchased as a hardware platform with all necessary modules or installed on a standard Windows PC. The software is Open Source and available on the asterics.eu web page.