The Gateway Project

Project Overview

This project focused on the development of a wheelchair-mounted device that provided advanced home control and telephone communications features in a wireless package.

The Gateway was based upon a sophisticated environmental control system design concept developed in 1989. The advanced features of the initial prototypes built in 1993 are still in many ways superior to most commercial ECS products available today. The Gateway device provided cordless telephone connectivity and access to a wide variety of home appliances and entertainment electronics via a 900Mhz digital transceiver. With a single input switch, the user could access a series of control menus that appeared on a high contrast LCD screen. In light of recent computer developments and in an effort to reduce the cost to the consumers, the Gateway was never commercialized. The research group instead is currently looking at porting the technology into a small palm-sized computer product. See Palm-PC Gateway.

Completed

1993

Primary Contact

Dan Leland

Financial Support

, Information Science and Technology Agency