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It’s been well over a year given we final saw the laser-guided, self-docking wheelchair grown by folks at Lehigh University, and right away the group is behind with an exactly some-more desirous project. According to join forces with highbrow John Spletzer, the target of a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the idea is to “extend the liberty of the wheelchair so it can navigate utterly in an civic sourroundings and take you wherever you need to go.” This will be finished by equipping robotic chairs with laser and camera sensors (which the group grown for the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge) as well as exhaustive, Google Street View-esque maps of the city where they will be operating. Of course, these guys will be handling in a bustling civic environment, so in further to large-scale 3D maps, they contingency be versed with suit formulation facilities for handling in unenlightened crowds and a becoming different environment. It’s as well shortly nonetheless to contend when these things competence turn accessible commercially, but if you’re a proprietor of the Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital in Allentown, PA, you competence have your possibility to exam one shortly enough.

[Via PhysOrg]

Filed under: Robots

NSF backs growth of laser-guided drudge wheelchairs creatively appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 November 2009 15:54:00 EST. Please see the terms for operate of feeds.

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