A low-cost reconfigurable embedded apparatus for two-dimensional (2-D) motion detection has been developed. This paper briefly outlines the embedded reconfigurable system architecture, and presents in-depth the 2-D motion detection model, which is directly mapped to reconfigurable hardware. Emphasis is placed on the hardware ability to adapt to individual needs of kinetically challenged persons by altering detection thresholds and delays, thus resulting into an efficient low-cost reconfigurable hardware implementation of the model. This paper also presents how the model detects complex motions through a vocabulary of simple motions, and how the system is trained to individual users' needs. Experimental results and integrated applications of the model for text processing are also presented.