Path followed:
1. Are there any external resources used?
Answer: Yes
2. Is the intent to mimic the lost part directly?
Answer: No
3. Can the repurposed components be controlled?
Answer: No
5) Self-driving wheelchair
FOR ALL THE talk of self-driving vehicles revolutionizing transportation, the technology promises to do even more for the elderly and disabled by allowing them to enjoy sustained independence. Autonomous vehicles will allow aging Baby Boomers to continue driving, and MIT researchers have packed the same hardware into a wheelchair.
Equipped with three LiDAR sensors, the wheelchair works much like a self-driving car. Before going into service, someone manually drives it through a given area, and the sensors build a map details how wide the hallways are, where the pillars are, and so on. Once that’s set, the user selects where he or she wants to go by click on the map, and the chair gets going, using the sensors to look for “dynamic obstacles”Ñlike people walking around, or that chair that wasn’t there earlier.
The chair’s not quite ready for primetime. Rus and her team are working to extend the tech so it works indoors and outdoors, and to teach the system to
make predictions, like where that person pushing the food cart is heading, and how best to avoid them. Rus has talked to hospitals in Boston and Singapore about piloting the technology, and says she’d need more resources to make the engineering work on a mass scale and bring it to market.
ÒMIT’S NEW WHEELCHAIR DRIVES ITSELF.Ó Web. 30 Sept 2017.
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