Device allows disabled people to communicate with their nose

Israeli scientists have developed a device that allows severely disabled people to communicate by using their nose.

Scientists from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel and the Sackler faculty of medicine at Tel Aviv University developed the device that converts sniffs into electrical signals, which in turn are passed to a computer. By sniffing in certain patterns, a paralytic of quadriplegic can select letters and numbers on a computer screen to compose a message.

The device also allows one to play computer games or can be fitted to a wheelchair and allow paralyzed people to drive it and move around.

The Israeli scientists had tested the device on disabled people and the results of the experiment were contained in a study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

The device cost $358 to build in a lab and mass producing it may lower the price to $10 or $20 per device, according to Noam Sobel, a professor of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute and one of the lead authors of the study.