Dr. Anton Plotkin shows off technology he says could help quadriplegic stay mobile. The wheelchair is controlled by Anton's nostrils and lungs. As he breathes in and out, his motorized chair moves in any direction he chooses.

The technology was developed in Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science. Using chips similar to those designed to deliver oxygen to patients, the system measures changes in nasal pressure. That pressure generates electrical signals which are passed to a computer via a USB connection. With a simple sniff, patients can move a cursor and tell the computer what they want to do.

Professor Noam Sobel is among the team of researchers behind the sniff controlled wheelchair.

"You can sniff in or out, or look at sniff onset or offset. And you have analog information because you can sniff either with more vigor or with less vigor, or for longer or shorter duration. Now, give me digital analog information I can fly a plane. I can do anything. So, from that the path is short to building a device that uses sniffs to write text, uses sniffs to drive a wheelchair, uses sniffs to do whatever you want."

The technology is also being used to help stroke patients and others with severe disabilities like locked-in syndrome to communicate. The breath controlled device uses predictive text methods and has helped many paralyzed people write and send email after years of communication limbo. Scientists say that the technology could be a breath of fresh air for patients.

"The key aspect of this whole story is that, we found that the ability to control the device is very highly conserved in a very severe disability. So people who are very severely injured, who are the locked-in, quadriplegic or really in a state where they can actually control nothing can still control this device. So it provides an opening for potential attraction with the world which is quite critical in this situation.”

So far, the device has been tested on more than a dozen people at the institute. But researchers want to make the technology more readily available, so that more patients could have the opportunity to express themselves.