Friday, September 19, 2008

MIT adds robotics, voice control to wheelchair

By Mass High Tech Staff

MIT reports its researchers are developing a robotic, voice-driven wheelchair, which would allow a user to be able to tell the wheelchair to go to a specific location, rather than control every twist and turn.

The autonomous function of the chair is based on a map stored in its memory, the school said. The chair would adapt to a person’s personal habits and learn an individual’s particular name for a location, according to the school.

Rather than manually capturing a detailed map of a building, the MIT system can learn about its environment by being taken around once on a guided tour, with important places identified along the way — much the same as a human being. For example, as the wheelchair is pushed around a nursing home for the first time, the patient or a caregiver would say: “this is my room” or “here we are in the foyer” or “nurse’s station.”

The project is being co-developed by Nicholas Roy, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics. MIT AgeLab researcher Bryan Reimerm and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory professor Seth Teller are also collaborating on the project.

Teller’s group at the CSAIL robotics, vision and sensor networks group is also working on a location-aware cellphone and industrial forklift that can autonomously transport large loads from place to place outdoors.

Roy and Teller have been exploring the use of wi-fi signals, which the chair uses, and wide-field cameras and laser rangefinders, coupled to computer systems that can construct and localize within an internal map of the environment as they move around. After preliminary tests on campus, they have begun trials with patients at the Boston Home in Dorchester, where all of the nearly 100 patients have partial or substantial loss of muscle control and use wheelchairs.

MIT said the researchers would like to add a collision-avoidance system using detectors to prevent the chair from bumping into other wheelchairs, walls or other obstacles. In addition, Teller says he hopes to add mechanical arms to the chairs, to help pick up and manipulate objects.

The research has been funded by Nokia Corp. and Microsoft Corp., MIT said.