About
About me
Who is behind this journal, why I research assistive technology and how I work.
My name is Antonio Blescia and I live in Bari, Italy. I have always worked on two things that may seem far apart: cyber security and research on assistive technology for people with disabilities. What ties them together is my many years of experience in industrial automation.
My background
I have worked for years in industrial & automation. That is where I learned to make software, electronics and machines work together, and to design systems that must always run reliably and safely, even when something goes wrong. On that foundation I follow two paths side by side.
Cyber security
I work on the defensive side of security: incident response, threat hunting, malware analysis and digital forensics (DFIR). In practice, I look for the traces an attack leaves on a system, reconstruct what happened and help stop it.
- I contribute to open source security tools. For example, I published the Windows.Audit.CISCat_Lite artifact on the Velociraptor Artifact Exchange.
- I have presented my research at the ConfSec conference.
- With DFIR Chronicles I tell real attack techniques, and how they get caught, as comics.
Assistive technology
In 2013 I published ThinkUino, an open source project that connected an Arduino board to an EEG headset: you could switch a device on just by concentrating. In 2014, in Bari, I started SmartChair, an electric wheelchair controlled by brain waves, together with home automation. Today, twelve years later, I am picking that work up again and extending it to other aids, such as augmentative and alternative communication with Kite.
The two paths often meet. An aid that moves a person, or speaks for them, is a connected device, and it has to be safe in both senses: it must not cause harm, and it must not be possible to tamper with it. Back in 2014, among SmartChair’s limits, I already listed data security as an open problem.
Why I do it
I have specific technical skills in automation, electronics, software and security. I believe that having these skills also brings a responsibility. That is why I feel it is my duty to use them to improve assistive devices for people with disabilities, which are often expensive, hard to adapt and closed.
You can also find me on GitHub and LinkedIn.
Why I do research in the open
We break down the barriers of movement through open technology, making autonomy and scientific sharing accessible to everyone.
I believe that the knowledge needed to give someone back their autonomy should be a common good. That is why I share the work while I am doing it, not only at the end.
How I work
- Open hardware. Schematics, PCBs, 3D models and bills of materials are published under open hardware licenses.
- Free software. The code is public, documented and reusable.
- Shared data. When participants consent, I publish anonymised datasets following the FAIR principles.
- A transparent journal. Every step goes into the journal, including the attempts that did not work.
- Participatory design. Nothing about us without us: the people who will use these aids take part in designing them.
Reusing my work
| What | License | You can… |
|---|---|---|
| Website and journal texts | CC BY 4.0 | copy and adapt them with attribution |
| Software | Stated in each repository | use, study and modify it |
| Hardware | Stated in each repository | build, modify and manufacture it |
Safety
This is a research journal. The prototypes described here are not certified medical devices and must not be used without the supervision of qualified staff. I also publish the known limits and risks of every component.