In a world of Web of Issues related gadgets and the sorts of sensible sensors that make self-driving vehicles attainable, there’s no scarcity of know-how that may very well be harnessed to make wheelchairs higher and safer.
A stunning variety of wheelchair customers — round 87% — have reported experiencing at the very least one tip or fall previously three years. In 2010, the final 12 months the info was out there, wheelchair accidents had been the reason for upward of 175,000 ER visits, with 30,000 of those main sufficient that the affected person needed to be admitted to the hospital. In different phrases, there’s an enormous drawback that may have an effect on wheelchair customers — and it’s one which tech may have the ability to assist clear up. That’s the place Luci comes into play.
Luci, proven off as a part of this week’s CES, is a first-of-its-kind software program and {hardware} platform that may be mounted onto each new and present energy wheelchairs to assist them make sense of their environments. This allows the augmented wheelchairs to “see” their environment, keep away from collisions, forestall harmful curb drop-offs, and extra.
The tech driving it is a mixture of stereo laptop imaginative and prescient, infrared, ultrasonic, and radar. It implies that wheelchair customers can function their chairs as regular, however secure within the data that they are going to be mechanically alerted — and stopping countermeasures deployed — within the occasion that they could be on the right track to have an accident. Ought to a chair tip over, Luci will moreover sound an alarm to draw assist, and will also be configured to ship computerized alerts to trusted people.
“Expertise has disrupted the way in which we take taxis, use telephones, store, and talk with associates, but it hasn’t a lot touched the world for folks in wheelchairs,” Barry Dean, CEO of Luci, informed Digital Traits. “Till Luci, no sensible know-how capabilities have been out there to energy wheelchairs — regardless of energy wheelchairs costing as a lot as a automotive, upwards of $60,000. We hope that is simply the beginning in bettering the lives of wheelchair customers and their households and caregivers.”
Luci is at present out there nationwide via complicated rehabilitation gear suppliers, priced at $8,445. It could even be eligible for reimbursement via sure healthcare suppliers and insurance coverage codes with letters of medical necessity.
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