What is PIMD?
PIMD stands for profound and multiple learning disabilities. Individuals affected by PIMD are immobile or have severely restricted mobility and are subject to profound and multiple sensory impairment in combination with profound intellectual impairment.
Many individuals with PIMD are unable to produce any clear and consistent signals contingent upon an ongoing real-time interactional situation. They are therefore unable to produce conventional gestures or vocalizations that may serve to communicate a particular need to a caregiver. For example, many such individuals are unable to nod or shake their head, offer a signal of joint reference such as a point or shift in eye gaze, push objects away or grasp objects towards them, shift their body position, or produce conventional affective vocalizations.
How can INSENSION help?
The INSENSION system will empower people with PIMD to do things previously unavailable to them through controlling their living environment.
We want to shift the point of decision from any caregiver supporting the person with PIMD to this very person. This will be done through advancing known technologies from several areas of computing such as affective computing, artificial intelligent and internet of things, which appropriately used and integrated create an opportunity for an assistive technology of a new kind.
To practically enable such a methodology we aim to involve a group of people with PIMD of various ages and genders who are provided with care services by the specialised centres maintained by one of the project partners – “Na Tak” Association (kindergarten, school, adult care center).This will create a very good basis for the start of the technical development.