Brief Explanation

In Japan there are over one million seven hundred thousand (1,700,000) people with physical disabilities and three hundred (300) schools for the physically disabled where children with physical disabilities attend. The University of Tsukuba’s Special Needs Schools, who operate various schools across the country for the physically disabled, declares "expanding the possibilities of children" as their educational philosophy　and aims to provide an educational environment where handicapped students can express their imagination freely.

Results

Eye Play the Piano gave an opportunity for disabled people who have lost their arms or legs, or people with muscular diseases to try a new experience, that is to play musical instruments freely without using their body. This PR project was covered by the media of 37 countries. As a result, this project has won the media publicity of over 9 million dollars. By making the Eye Play the Piano application an open source application, anyone around the world will be able to experience the system if they have access to the head mount display and musical instrument. Moreover, through charity fundraising, we were able to donate the device to other 53 schools in Japan. Furthermore, the Ministry of Education has started to fully introduce the system to expressive education, which has advanced the future of special education in Japan.

Creative Execution

We developed the universal piano system,“Eye Play the Piano,” by using an eye-tracking system within a head mount display so the piano could be played without the use of hands or arms but rather by blinking on the desired key to play that note. The arrangement of the standard keyboard, which is designed to be played by hand has been reassembled to an interface which can be played by “sight.” A very rich and varied musical performance can be obtained through the combined application of the mono-tone mode and harmonic mode. The project to use the system in a musical performance was started alongside Kota Numajiri, a student of this school who was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy and had never played a musical instrument. In December of 2014, after 4 months of practicing, he played the piano for their first ever Christmas concert at this school.

Through the practice of their educational philosophy of, "expanding the possibilities of children" the University of Tsukuba’s Special Needs-Schools strives to deepen the understanding of education for the disabled to the world public and also plead to education-related personnel including the national institution in hopes of further improvement and development to the current state of Special Needs Education.

Children with physical handicaps who have difficulty with the movement of their hands or feet often have limitations with regards to“individual expression.” This is where we came up with the idea of making good use of one part of their bodies that they could move freely, the eye. The development for the universal piano system,“Eye Play the Piano,” was brought up with the idea of coupling an eye-tracking system to recognize the direction of eyes through the virtual reality headset　with an instrument so the user could play the instrument without their hands or arms but instead only with their eyes.