Engineer with cerebral palsy designs device that promotes digital inclusion of disabled people

Júnior Prado, a Brazilian with a master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, faced several serious challenges growing up, due to his medical condition. He was born with cerebral palsy. Regarding school, the main problem he had was not being able to write. So, Júnior had to rely on his colleagues for class notes and the evaluations were made orally.

Inspired by the hardships he went through, Junior devoted his expertise to developing tools that could ease the life of people alike. Alongside the team of ‘Grupo de Tecnologias Assistivas e Educacionais (TAE)’ of the Federal University of Ceará, he designed the AdaptMouse, which allows patients with motor disabilities to use the computer. The mouse benefits people with low mobility in the upper members and was made using a 3D printer. The main advantage compared to the equipment already on the market is the price, which is much lower.

It was also created, to be used alongside the mouse, an adapted text editor, which detects hand gestures and converts them into written text. The system that detects hand motion replaces the traditional keyboard. For the development of these tools, it was used machine learning techniques and electromyograms (EMG). Further information about the methodology used can be found in the article: ‘Classification of Hand Movements from EMG Signals for People with Motor Disabilities’. (DOI: 10.1109/TLA.2020.9398644)
Júnior Prado is perfecting the products and has hopes to put them on the market in a near future.

This story was adapted from: https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/geral/noticia/2021-11/engenheiro-com-pa... and https://www.opovo.com.br/noticias/ceara/sobral/2021/11/11/engenheiro-cri...

The images were taken from: https://diariodonordeste.verdesmares.com.br/regiao/no-interior-do-ce-alu... , as we do not own any of them.