| VANCOUVER -
February 10, 2010 -
SOC Robotics is pleased to announce delivery of the first
prototype Power Assisted Wheelchair control system to Brad
Zdanisvsky for ongoing system integration. SOC Robotics is
working to develop a power assisted wheelchair (PAW) with Brad
Zdanivsky who became quadriplegic in his late teens following a
car accident. Brad is an avid rock climber (wordpress.verticalchallenge.org)
who needed a solution for day-to-day wheelchair mobility. He
does not want a full powered wheelchair as it doesn’t give him
exercise but his un-powered wheelchair is hard on his shoulders
and his health and life expectancy – especially on uphill
grades. So Brad set out to create a smart power add-on device
that attaches to existing wheelchair frames with a target price
of under $1500. Other PAW solutions on the market are heavy,
expensive and require component upgrades.
SOC Robotics is supplying the control electronics and mechanical
hardware components for the PAWmotion prototype and Brad is
providing the software to operate the SOC hardware. The
hardware consists of friction drive motors on each wheel
together with motion control electronics, wheel and frame
mounted sensors (accelerometer, compass), rechargeable batteries
and soon a stereovision option for collision avoidance.
Brad will license his software under an open source project
named openPAW making it freely available worldwide to a
community of medical researchers, software programmers and
developers who will add function and refinement to Brad’s work.
The first PAWmotion hardware is operational and Brad is adding
the software for function. Other people associated with UBC
will also play a role in the OpenPAW project. Future
refinements and developments are expected to evolve quickly to
improve the basic PAWmotion platform.
What will PAWmotion do? Electric power will be delivered to the
wheels between power strokes provided by the operator. The
PAWmotion kit will sense when power is needed and deliver it to
each wheel in accordance with the sensory feedback to the
system. The goal is to make the wheelchair operator feel like
they are operating the wheelchair on a flat surface in a
straight line regardless of whether they are going up hill, down
hill, across hill, or over off-camber grades. On downhill
grades the PAWmotion system will brake (and in future, recharge
the batteries); on uphill grades it will counter the effects of
gravity and provide power to flatten out the hill; on
cross-grades it will power one wheel more than the other to
counter the tendency of the wheelchair to follow the fall line
of the grade. The system won’t get “pushy” with the operator
but will instead run seamlessly in the background to complement
the operator even if the operator is using one arm and one foot
for propulsion.
PAW Hardware
The
PAW hardware uses several currently available SOC Robotics
embedded processor products such as the Wasp with 3-axis
accelerometer and 3-axis rate gyro, the ZB10 Zigbee wireless
module and the MM130 stepper motor driver. A special power
management module is under development that integrates the motor
drive logic with position sensors and a Zigbee wireless module.
The wheel sensor pack consists of a Wasp with 3-axis
accelerometer, 3-axis rate gyros and a Zigbee wireless mode.
The wheel sensors modules are being integrated into a single
module that will provide a compact mobile wireless Inertial
Measurement Unit (IMU).
Availability
and Pricing
The
PAWmotion platform is not available to researchers at this time
but is expected to cost in the $1500 range when released later
in 2010. The individual embedded electronics are available now
and information concerning these devices is on our web site at
www.soc-robotics.com. About SOC Robotics
SOC
Robotics (SOC) designs and manufactures advanced electronic and
electro-mechanical systems for the global robotics and
embedded-systems markets. SOC has a broad portfolio of
intellectual property (IP) designed in-house that embraces
embedded DSP, motion control, web server, vision processing and
sensor technologies. Customers worldwide include universities,
researchers, industrial engineers, military test labs, consumer
electronics and security companies, rapid prototype PCB
developers and medical device engineers. SOC Robotics products,
tools, and software modules are uniquely inter-operable and end
user programmable with rich-feature sets. SOC components
combine to create an array of cost effective robotic systems
that perform with industrial level accuracy. Products include
SCARA, SMT, and Solder robots and linear actuators together with
proprietary and open-source software modules. Customers may
embed SOC electronics into their own products or industrial
processes, or assemble individual components to create turnkey
robotic systems for industrial, tactical, or educational
applications.
Press Contact:
Press Inquiries
SOC Robotics, Inc.
225 East 20th Street
North Vancouver, BC
Canada V7L 3A6
TEL: (604) 628-7227
FAX: (604) 608-5588
info@soc-robotics.com
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