In real world, we are only taught to distinguish thinkers from doers, but how about someone's thoughts becoming actions, or, more precisely, instructions to propel the wheelchair on which he/she is sitting?
This is just one of several technology milestones that awaited visitors to this year's Texas Instrument Developer Conference (TIDC) held in Bangalore recently. From the look of it we can recognise this contraption - a wheelchair. But it has the astounding ability of reading the neurological signals of a physically incapacitated person and converts that into instructions upon which the wheelchair would move.

“The sensor is placed (externally) close to the larynx,” explained Pravin Ganapathy, Director-Corporate Business Development, TI India.

“Though a person may not be in a position to speak, his throat muscles contract and make the larynx move and the nerves around the throat carry the thought signals. The sensor captures those thought signals and transform them into instructions received by the micro processor fixed in the wheelchair that moves the wheels with the help of motors. This is developed by US-based Ambient Corporation, who have used our MSP 430 microcontroller to do this."

Targeted for those who become severely restricted in their mobility as a result of accidents or illnesses, the wheelchair requires absolutely no physical effort from them and is said to be more accurate in executing the instructions they think.

Tests have shown that it moves almost exactly where its occupant intends it to and can even move side-ways to avoid collision with other objects.

A presentation at the conference on “high performance analog for motor control applications” gave an account of the technology, similar to the one that works in the wheelchair (C2000 Digital Signal Processor, which is said to provide a complete ‘System on a chip’ solution for low cost applications).

“Signal Chain for digital motor control includes the analog input, analog to digital conversion (ADC), signal processing, digital to analog conversion (DAC) and analog output,” explained Tom Hendrick, from TI's HPA Applications team, who made the presentation.

“In most cases, some sort of signal conditioning is required on the input side of the controller. Applied signals from sensors, encoders, resolvers or even the input command signal often require filtering or gain of some sort before they can be digitised by the data converter,” he said while explaining about some of the issues the developers faced.

The presentation also detailed on the techniques TI's team has adopted to handle low-power issues as well as showing how its data converters, high efficiency switches and digital isolators actually work to make signal conversion and transmission accurate and efficient.

Most presentations surrounded the ways to optimise signal capture and analog-to-digital and vice versa. “This remains a formidable challenge for our technologists,” said Ganapathy.

“Since much of our technology concerns capturing signals in natural environments, amidst the noise and other factors like temperature, etc., it is a complex task and our technical team is often left to work on the most efficient ways of capturing it with minimum compromises. In this context, the efficiency of ADC and DAC take precedence,” he said.

The wheelchair is a mere indication of the significance of sensors in the coming years. Besides that, TI also displayed an 'intelligent sensor' technology which can be used in offices to introduce energy efficiency. This sensor, Ganapathy revealed, is based on TI's Da Vinci technology, a family of processors which is also applied in High Definition video and image processing solutions.

Convergence, the integration of various applications into one portable device (handset), has been one of the areas in which TI is present for a long time. Not surprisingly, discussions around the conference concern this segment.

“Features like the five mega pixels cameras are things in which we have been working for a long time,” Ganapathy said.

“We've been showcasing video projectors (that uses the DLP technology) in mobile phones, where it not only enables someone to capture video, but allows the person to hook up to television and play it or simply project it on the wall. HD video on mobile phones is something we have worked on a lot and you will perhaps see the results in a few months, if not in a year,” he said.

Since last year, medical electronics has become one of the major focuses for TI's technologies and they have strengthened their focus in the domain by setting up a dedicated working group for it.

“We have specific interest in low-cost consumer electronic-style devices. Of course, everyone keeps talking about glucometer, but we are going a step or two ahead in developing technologies for things like BP monitor and digital thermometers which can be easily operated by a lay person,” Ganapathy said.

He said TI's partners are also working on developing high-end 3-D imaging that may enable doctors to get a comprehensive 3-d image of different regions of the body (using TI's DLP imaging technology). One of its partners is using the imaging technology to develop a device that would help medical workers to locate a person’s veins for injecting medicines.