A project at the department of occupational science and occupational therapy will allow wheelchair-bound adults to better navigate their power wheelchairs through obstacle-rife environments.
The Wheelchair Obstacle Avoidance Helper (WOAH) is being developed at the intelligent assistive technology and system lab (IATSL), and consists of a “Nimble Rocket” wheelchair, an IBM laptop, a 3D sensor, and a mash of wires and wooden blocks.
With a US$5,000 Canesta 3D perception sensor mounted on an arm of the chair, which creates a real-time depth image of the surrounding area, a laptop under the seat then computes factors to determine whether a collision with an object ahead is imminent and what the best path around it would be.
“Try moving left,” said the wheelchair in a strange, yet warm pre-recorded message, after sensing an object in front of it and calculating the “direction of greatest freedom” around the obstacle.
“I would personally call this an early prototype. There are sort of a lot rough edges still,” said Hoey, as the wheelchair repeated its message a few more times in rapid succession. Hoey, a postdoctoral researcher, has been working on the WOAH system since 2004. He is the brains behind the project, according to Dr. Alex Mihailidis, the head of IATSL.
“My job is to think of the technical directions that the lab is going to go with – the kind of models and techniques we’re going to use,” he said.
After emerging with a US$10,000 prize for the WOAH system from an international design competition last fall, and with an upcoming workshop to decide on directions for the project, advancements with the project are close to being developed.
“It’s really important for people to move around,” said Hoey. Feelings of depression and loneliness that come from being stuck on a chair can be decreased “if you can design a system that helps them move around without the need of another person there [to assist them],” he said.
Hoey hopes the wheelchair will expand from its current role of simply being an obstacle avoidance system, which according to its creators is already capable of “reducing the amount of burden placed on human caregivers.”
“There’s this problem with elderly people who are getting older…usually they require help from a caregiver,” said Hoey.
The usual occurrence of family members initially taking on the role of caregivers often brings up issues of embarrassment and privacy and results in the elderly being sent to long-term care facilities.
“What is fairly well known is that people’s health drops off very quickly once they get in a long-term health facility because they’re not surrounded by familiar things anymore – maybe they’re more lonely,” Hoey continued.
“What we want to do is to design technology that’s going to just enable people to stay in their houses longer.”
“We would like to explore the possibility of using mapping features where the chair would know the environment and be able to help the user navigate the space,” said Mihailidis, who is overseeing the project.
