Intelligent wheelchair
Wheelchairs with artificial intelligence can be controlled using facial expressions
Dmitry Mazalevsky, Naked Science
The Brazilian company Hoobox Robotics, in collaboration with Intel, has created Wheelie 7, a device that uses artificial intelligence to help a disabled person control his wheelchair through any of ten facial expressions – from raising an eyebrow to sticking out his tongue.
Modern motorized wheelchairs are usually controlled via joysticks or sensors attached to the body.
The Wheelie artificial intelligence automatically recognizes the user's smile and other gestures, that is, a person does not need to learn to control it separately. Using the application, you can link each facial expression to a particular direction of movement – left, right, forward, backward – as well as to the gas or brake. In tests, the expression of a smile is most often associated with inhibition: the reason is that people can involuntarily smile when they hear a joke or react to the appearance of an acquaintance or relative. Artificial intelligence is also able to recognize when a person is going to cough or sneeze, so as not to mistake it for a command.
Today Wheelie is a prototype tested by more than 60 people, most of whom suffer from quadriplegia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or have an age disability.
Hoobox Robotics CEO Paulo Pinheiro says that patients use Wheelie for an average of almost four hours a day. According to him, the kit can work both in sunlight and in dim lighting. In addition, the developed artificial intelligence is compatible with 95 percent of the motorized wheelchairs of this company, and its installation takes only seven minutes, which gave the name to the wheelchair itself.
According to The National Statistical Center (The National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center), about 288 thousand patients suffering from spinal cord injury live in the United States, and every year their number increases by about 17.7 thousand people.
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