A group of researchers at the University of California at Irvine, USA, found a way that is cheap, easy and fun for the children in learning to steer a wheelchair. To lower the cost and improve accessibility to training, the researchers have developed a robotic powered wheelchair system on which young children with a disability can safely develop driving skills at their own pace with minimum assistance. A Wheelchair robotics, and a line follower robot used for this training.
Children learn to drive a wheelchair, they were given the task to pursue a line follower robot which has been provided and ran to follow the line. When caught, the robot performs a dance and the chair plays a little tune. The joystick haptic assistance was found to enhance learning in both the non-disabled children trained with haptic guidance and in the child with a severe motor impairment.
Speaking about the results, Quoted from sciencedaily (13-Aug-2010) Marchal-Crespo, one of the researchers group said, “Ultimately, we envision creating a training experience that compares favorably with the fun children experience with the best amusement park rides, but that facilitates the development of driving skill.”
| Title | : | Robot Helps Children to “drive” Wheelchair |
| Category | : | Robotics News. |
| Tags | : | robot wheelchair, robotic wheelchair training, wheelchair training for children, |
The word robotics was derived from the word robot, which was introduced to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which premiered in 1921.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word robotics was first used in print by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story "Liar!", published in May 1941 in Astounding Science Fiction. Asimov was unaware that he was coining the term; since the science and technology of electrical devices is electronics, he assumed robotics already referred to the science and technology of robots. In some of Asimov's other works, he states that the first use of the word robotics was in his short story Runaround (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942). However, the word robotics appears in "Liar!"
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