Inventive Oregon Teen Trying To Set His Disabled Cousin Free -- Intricate Computer Gadget Would Let Man Communicate With A Blink

PHILOMATH, Ore. - A near-fatal accident in Southern California 12 years ago left a Philomath teenager's only cousin trapped inside his body, unable to speak or move.

But Jim Richardson, 17, is determined to set his cousin free. He is building a computer hardware and software system that will give the young man the ability to communicate for the first time in 12 years.

"It motivates me tremendously," Richardson said.

His cousin, 22-year-old Matthew Stern of Palos Verdes Estates, was the victim of a brain injury that destroyed his motor functions. He can think, hear and understand what the outside world says to him. But in reply, he only can move his eyes and head.

Richardson's family still lived in Southern California when the accident occurred. He and his younger brother were at his aunt and uncle's when Stern went to borrow some butter from a neighbor.

Stern, then 10, pressed the automatic garage-door button and began to duck beneath the descending door. But a spring caught on the hood of his jacket. The door didn't stop, and its choking grasp left Matthew without oxygen for more than 10 minutes.

His father, Larry, prayed in the ambulance for his son's heart to beat again. It did.

After six months in a coma, Stern awoke with a laugh. He had heard his father telling a joke to a nurse.

But laughing and making noises are all the only way he can communicate.

"He's this real intelligent child inside of this job that can't talk," said his mother, Linda.

When Richardson talks mechanical engineering, his eyes light up. His knowledge bubbles out of him excitedly. He knows computers. He knows how to build them, run them, tinker with them. He knows video capturing and digitizing. He knows electronics. He knows robotics.

His laboratory is a corner desk in the bedroom of his family's spacious home just south of Philomath. A card table is covered with a maze of wires, batteries and tools. A white plaster mold of Richardson's head sits on top.

He used the mold to build from fiberglass a black head harness with two rectangular boxes in front.

One box contains a tiny infrared camera aimed at the wearer's pupil.

Richardson puts on the headset and turns on his computer. A live picture of his eyeball, delayed just a few seconds, floats on the screen.

Eventually his cousin will wear the headset. He will see a picture of the computer screen. Instead of using a hand-controlled mouse, Stern will blink his eyes on different parts of the screen. The camera will sense the movement and transmit the command to the computer's cursor.

For example, the wearer will blink on a file, open his eyes, go to another screen section and blink again, "dragging" a file to another spot.

"It's just like you have a mouse," Richardson said. "But instead, your eye is doing it."

The speed of the blinking system can be set so the headset camera won't pick up normal eye blinks.

Richardson is setting up an alphabet and common word file, so Stern can begin writing and expressing himself. A human-voice system installed in the computer will allow him to "speak" what he writes.

Eventually, Richardson would like to link the computer to household appliances so Stern can turn on a television. Or, it could be linked to an electric wheelchair.

Richardson's mother, Carole, a substitute teacher, has no idea where her son got his engineering talents.

"The first thing he wanted was a tool belt," she said.

Richardson's creativity advanced quickly from an award-winning 4-H pig to a two-person hovercraft he built at age 14.

After seeing the hovercraft, which can carry two people a foot over water at 35 mph, Carole and her husband, Neil, learned not to doubt his ideas.

"We quit saying, `It's impossible,' " she said.

One of Richardson's employers, consultant Mike Plackett, heard of the hovercraft through a photograph in the Gazette-Times. He hired Richardson the past two summers to help build full-sized hovercrafts for the Navy and Army.

"He's an extremely intelligent young man," Plackett said.

Plackett had a 20-year-old hovercraft that needed rewiring. They didn't have any good diagrams to work from.

"He kept saying, `Look, Mike. I can do it,' " Plackett said. "Basically I closed my eyes and said, `Go ahead.' He did a fabulous job."

Plackett said Richardson's eye-controlled cursor is similar to military technology that allows a helicopter pilot to aim his guns by just looking at a target. But that project is classified, so Richardson has created his invention on his own.

Stern's mother, Linda, has only heard about the project so far. Richardson expects to take it to California this summer.