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Portuguese intelligent wheelchair receives award
A Portuguese robotics project whose purpose is to develop intelligent wheelchair – which has already been tested with patients with cerebral palsy – has now received its fifth award: a Best Paper Award, given during the International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions, which took place in Lisbon in April.
This technology – coordinated by professor Luís Paulo Reis at the School of Engineering of the University of Minho (EEUM) and developed with the support of the universities of Porto and Aveiro – "can be controlled by head and body movements, voice commands, facial expressions and even thoughts".
The IntellWheels: Intelligent Wheelchair with Multimodal Interface can avoid obstacles, plan tasks and communicate with other devices. This work by Portuguese researchers has already been chosen by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology as a model project.
"The main idea behind it was creating an intelligent low-cost ergonomic wheelchair that could be controlled by a flexible multimodal interface”, explains Luís Paulo Reis in a press release sent to the Boas Notícias.
According to the expert, "the user can choose from several commands and combine them". The options available “are voice commands, head movements or the brain computer interface, which will make it possible for the chair to be moved through thoughts”, he added.
Luís Paulo Reis is also optimistic towards the future of robotics saying that in two decades there will not be much difference between humans and robots when it comes to intelligence and the capacity to perform complex tasks.
“The robots will be our partners. They may not be humanoid robots, but they will be working along with us, in teams of humans and robots, to solve common problems or bigger challenges, namely when it comes to exploring oceans and others planets”, he stressed.
Five national and international awards
Other than the universities of Minho, Porto and Aveiro, the IntellWheels is also supported by the Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Laboratory, by the Algoritmi Centre at UMinho, by INESC TEC, by the Institute of Electronics and Telematics Engineering of Aveiro, by the School of Health Technology in Porto and by the Cerebral Palsy Association in Porto.
The chair has already been awarded five times by different national and international entities. The last award was given to the paper "Manual, Automatic and Shared Methods for Controlling an Intelligent Wheelchair: Adaptation to Cerebral Palsy Users".
The authors,
Brígida Mónica Faria, Luís Paulo Reis and Nuno Lau, received the award at an international
conference that took place at the 13th National Robotics Festival.
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