Using the mouth as a computer keyboard

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review work at the Georgia Institute of Technology that uses magnetic sensor arrays to construct assistive technology systems for disabled people.Design/methodology/approach – The innovative Tongue Drive system is described, along with its advantages over other mouth‐based control devices. The results of practical tests on able‐bodied volunteers are reported. Finally, there is a review of other related projects by the same researchers.Findings – Magnetic field sensors, wireless communications and feature extraction algorithms take advantage of the dexterity of the tongue to form an unobtrusive and non‐invasive control system with a large set of commands. Novice users achieved an information transfer rate of about 150 bits/min.Originality/value – This paper displays the ingenuity and effectiveness of systems built on magnetic sensor arrays.