3-D system guides wheelchair, wins design competition

An imaging-based wheelchair collision-avoidance system may help people with cognitive disabilities gain increased mobility and feelings of independence. The 3-D imaging system was developed by researchers at the University of Toronto and won the $10,000 top prize in a design competition sponsored by Canesta (Sunnyvale, CA, USA; www.canesta.com) to implement the company's electronic perception technology--a CMOS-based single-chip technology that uses a time-of-flight principle to determine the distance from each pixel in the array to the corresponding feature in the scene.

The Nimble Rocket wheelchair was developed by Jesse Hoey and colleagues from the university's intelligent assistive technology department and the departments of rehabilitation sciences and computer science, along with the laboratory for computational intelligence at the University of British Columbia. After constructing an occupancy grid map from a depth image (right figure) of a scene, the system directs the wheelchair to stop before collisions and suggests alternatives for mobility.

The $5000 prize was won by Matei Ciocarlie of the department of computer science at Columbia University (New York, NY, USA). The design integrated the Canesta sensor with a robotic arm and a grasping simulator to work in unstructured environments by detecting, tracking, and modeling objects. Contestants fit in several categories: robotics, assisted living for handicapped, security and facial recognition, and industrial applications.