A Truly Intelligent Wheelchair for Severely Disabled People

Imagine being a multiple sclerosis patient used to driving a wheelchair with a joystick. As your condition progresses, you may loose the strength and control to operate a wheelchair using a joystick. It would be a tremendous setback to lose the independence of freely moving around in a wheelchair.

Soon that thought may become less of a worry as MIT is making good progress designing an intelligent wheelchair controlled simply by voice.

The wheelchair uses two different systems for navigation: it relies on GPS outdoors and is guided by a map of the local environment to navigate inside. What’s really unique about this particular intelligent wheelchair is that it’s completely self-learning. The chair is programmed when it’s taken on a guided tour of an area during which time key locations are identified via WiFi.

Witness this amazing technology by checking out this video that explains how the voice-command robotic wheelchair operates.