ICue

Current Projects:

• Smart Wheelchairs
  • Drive Safe
  • Wheelchair Convoy System
• Personal Assistants
  • ICue - Interactive Task Guidance
  • Navigation Assistant

Individuals with acquired cognitive impairments such as those associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke, or dementia, experience difficulty maintaining daily schedules and performing the sequential steps required to complete the activities that comprise those schedules. Similar difficulties can be experienced by some individuals with developmental disabilities. In order to address the needs of these persons, AT Sciences is developing a cognitive orthosis, called ICue, to aid cognitively impaired clients and their caregivers in managing their daily activities. ICue will allow a caregiver to organize a client's activities into a daily schedule and will instruct the client in how to perform activities in the schedule. The system will both provide reminders and interactive task guidance, providing step-by-step instructions as the person completes his daily activities. Development of the ICue system is underway through a Phase I SBIR award from the NIH National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1 R43 HD044277-01).

Personal assistants such as ICue will be better able to provide appropriate, timely reminders if they have information about a person's environment. Therefore, AT Sciences is also developing sensors which will allow personal assistants to detect when their owner needs help. Such monitoring can also be used as an emergency alert system.

Project Team

• Edmund LoPresti, PhD
• Stephen Hayashi (Pittsburgh VA Health System)
• Ned Kirsch, PhD, ABPP (University of Michigan)
• Debra Schreckenghost, MEE (Metrica, Inc)
• Richard Simpson, PhD (University of Pittsburgh)

Publications

• Kirsch, N.L., Shenton, M., Spirl, E., Rowan, J., Simpson, R., Schreckenghost, D., LoPresti, E. Web-based assistive technology interventions for cognitive impairments after traumatic brain injury: A selective review and two cases studies. Rehabilitation Psychology. (in press).
• Simpson, R., Schreckenghost, D., & Kirsch, N.L. (2002). A Task Planning, Scheduling and Sequencing Orthotic for the Cognitively Impaired. Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Automation as Caregiver: The Role of Intelligent Technology in Elder Care, Edmonton, Canada, July 2002.
• LoPresti, E.F., Friedman, M.B., Hages, D. Electronic Vocational Aid for People with Cognitive Disabilities. Proceedings of the RESNA 1997 Annual Conference, pp. 514-516, June 1997.