Page 18 - Mobility Management, March 2020

Technology Series
Robotics & CRT
Toyota is no longer involved with the iBOT nearly four years after signing an agreement with inventor Dean Kamen to develop the “next generation” of iBOT, according to Doug Moore, GM, Technology for Human Support at Toyota North America. Instead, Toyota has been at work on several mobility-related projects, demonstrating the Japanese mega-corporation’s commit- ment to becoming a “mobility company” rather than an automo- tive company, Moore said.
“We have been spending a ton of time, especially in this complex rehab area, making sure that we understand the real needs,” Moore told Mobility Management in an interview. “We’ve been looking at the end customers, whether it’s direct users, caregivers, care receivers or ATPs, PTs, DMEs, all these individ- uals. We’ve been having conversations across the whole world to understand what are the real challenges and what are the real needs that are out there.”
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020 in January, Toyota’s display featured examples of mobility products that would be included in the company’s ideal “Woven City.” Those products included the Human Support Robot (HSR), an AI robot with voice-control capability, and a wheelchair-link battery electric vehicle (BEV) designed for “those who have difficulty walking and those in wheelchairs,” according to a press release.
Moore, who has risen to the top of the robotics team since joining Toyota in 2011, stopped short of committing to any mobility product releases from the company. He noted his expe- rience working on Project BLAID, a wearable device for blind and visually impaired people that the company first publicized in 2016. While that and other mobility products have not been released yet, showcasing that Toyota is focused on developing inclusive products is important, Moore said.
“I’ve intentionally tried to make sure we don’t over-promise and under-deliver, because there’s still a lot of thinking that has to go into these platforms to make sure we can execute it right,” Moore said. “We want to show people that we are thinking and consid- ering the true needs and the true value of what it means to bring solutions to the whole broad community, but at the same time we have to be careful and cautious about what we put out there.”
ROBOTICS PRODUCTS COME TO COMPLEX REHAB
Robotics engineers in the CRT and mobility world have one trait in common: a desire to see their algorithms and technical work turn into an application that changes people’s lives.
For Jay Beavers, a co-founder and managing member of Seattle-based Evergreen Circuits, the inspiration came from Steve Gleason, the former NFL player turned ALS activist. When Gleason challenged a group of Microsoft employees to create a system allowing him to drive his wheelchair with his eyes, they answered the call.
After Microsoft decided not to proceed into the medical device sector, Beavers and his partners created their own company and began to sell the Independence Drive system, which combines a power wheelchair, tablet computer and eye-tracking camera, in 2018.
16 MARCH2020|MOBILITYMANAGEMENT
Steve Gleason, ALS activist, with the Independence Drive power chair controls he helped to create.
“The thing that I
think robotics will do
that will really impact
this industry is provide
for more independent
living and reduce
the need for 24-hour
caregivers,” Beavers
said in an interview.
“Japan is kind of on the
cusp of this because
they’re ahead of us in
terms of having an
aging population and
not having enough caregivers. We in the U.S. are going to need to address the same issue in the next 20 to 30 years. That’s the biggest opportunity.”
Prior to founding Braze Mobility, Viswanathan spent time researching and interviewing wheelchair users, often listening to their concerns about property damage in their homes and the myriad issues that come along with navigating tight spaces in power chairs.
She also recognized that previous attempts to solve the problem had relied too much on self-driving car technology, which is set in outdoor spaces and primarily focuses on getting from “point A to point B” through GPS, she said.
“We realized that the issues here were very, very different to what [previous engineers] thought they were,” Viswanathan said. “It was all indoors and tight spaces: getting through a doorway, getting in and out of an elevator, trying to get in a really tight parking spot, getting on and off public transit. It was very enlightening.”
In 2017, Braze conducted a beta launch of its Hydra and Sentina sensor systems, focusing on connecting with institutions and clinicians rather than customer marketing. Through working with users of the beta product, Viswanathan found that end
Jay Smith operates Independence Drive, which currently is recommended for indoor environments.
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