Dinesh Pankaj, a scientist at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)-Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO), is looking to reinvent the wheel. The current generation of motorised wheelchairs rely on a joystick to control motion and that, he says, rules out quadriplegics or even those who cannot effectively coordinate their limbs.
The Intelligent Patient Vehicle (IPV), being developed by Mr. Pankaj and his colleagues at this Chandigarh-based lab whose inventions span an earthquake warning system now used in the Delhi Metro to a ‘reading machine’ to help the visually impaired read online, enables wheelchairs to be manoeuvred by no more than twiddling a finger on a touchpad. More ambitiously, a future upgrade hopes to have the system wholly controlled by head gestures.
“Two variants of the IPV are being developed to meet the needs of elderly and paraplegic with weak limbs and quadriplegics,” says Mr. Pankaj.
Getting the details right Much like scrolling up-down-left-right on smartphones, the IPVs will be powered by a microcomputer that will ‘transmit’ these directions to the wheelchair’s motor. It isn’t a major technical challenge but one needs to ensure that there are enough sensors on the vehicle to ensure the user’s safety. “What if the person is very close to a flight of stairs? So safety and braking systems are key,” he adds.
Motorised wheelchairs available in India are costly because the control panel that powers it is usually imported. Making it in-house, says Mr. Pankaj, would reduce the cost of such wheelchairs from Rs.1.5 lakh to Rs.60,000. CSIO has developed the control system and integrated it into test wheelchairs but they are yet to be tested by paraplegics for reliability and ruggedness. Ostrich Mobility, a Bengaluru-based company that makes electric wheelchairs, has tested the IPV and talks are on for potential commercialisation, says Mr. Pankaj.
But the tough nut to crack is the version of the wheelchair that can be controlled entirely by head movements. In the lab prototype, a laptop with a camera is attached to the wheelchair that maps the relative position of the head from the screen. For such a system to work, the machinery has to correctly interpret head movements as ‘left’ or ‘right’. By March next, not only will the team have to eschew the laptop for a more compact monitor but also ensure that the wheelchair is ready to be used safely. “For a first-time user, there would be some amount of learning that the machine has to do to adjust to the user, but I doubt it would involve more than a few days,” says Mr. Pankaj.
Making spaces disabled-friendly India is particularly deficient in making public spaces more accessible for the differently abled, according to several reports by advocacy groups as well India’s own Urban Development Ministry that earlier this year announced a scheme to begin rating the disability-friendliness of public buildings.
The Ministry of Social Justice records that India has about 20 million differently abled people with nearly 11 million of them classified as being affected by locomotive disability. India has among the highest prevalence of locomotive disability internationally at 1,046 per 1,00,000 people in the rural areas and 901 per 1,00,000 people among the urban population.
The IPV resulted from a larger CSIR-led push to use technology to improve access for the differently abled. Given low incomes in India, manual wheelchairs make up the vast majority but more affordable motorised wheelchairs could capture a significant market, says R.K. Sinha, director, CSIR-CSIO.
jacob.koshy@thehindu.co.in
