Device gives a leg up in video games and more

Invention allows disabled users to control computers with their feet

Once an avid video gamer, Gyorgy Levay stopped playing when he lost his hands to a meningitis infection six years ago.

Manipulating a mouse or a controller without hands or fingers was frustratingly impossible, but the struggles Levay faced sparked an interest in building devices to make life easier for him and other upper-limb amputees.

Now a biomedical engineering graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University, he developed a prototype device last year that will enable people to command a computer using their feet instead of their hands.

Levay, 28, a Hungarian native who pronounces his first name “George,” is on a Fulbright scholarship to develop prosthetic devices at Johns Hopkins. He created his GEAR (Game Enhancing Augmented Reality) device in a biomedical instrumentation class and believes it could have broad appeal even for those who aren’t amputees.

“Right now basically all control options on computers are for hands,” he said. His device “is not only useful for people who lost limbs, it’s useful for people who have limited control in their limbs, like people who suffered a stroke or suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome. They can benefit from a method where they use their feet instead of relying so heavily on their hands for the simple control of computers.”

Earlier this year, the clunky sandal-like device won a $7,500 grand prize in the 2016 Intel-Cornell Cup, in which student inventors are judged on applications of embedded technology, and was a finalist in the 2016 Johns Hopkins Healthcare Design Competition. Levay secured a provisional patent for the device through the university.

A user activates the device’s four sensors by pressing their feet into the foot bed in various ways. Those sensors, embedded in a silicon and 3-D printed plastic exterior, can be customized to follow any programmed command, but his unit is set up to perform game functions such as crouching, moving forward and backward, and moving left or right.

Besides playing computer games, the device could be customized to work with a computer for any task, such as editing photos.

Levay said he doesn’t want to create a startup to promote the device, a venture he called “pretty risky.” He hopes an established company will buy the device, refine it and put it on the market. He thinks it could appeal

AMY DAVIS/BALTIMORE SUN Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering student Gyorgy Levay created the GEAR device to help him control a computer with his feet after a meningitis infection cost him his hands. He hopes to sell the idea to an established company that can refine and market it.