The First Head Transplant Patient is Developing an Autonomous Wheelchair

A team of robotics specialists are combining cutting edge robotics and tracking technology to create the world’s first autopilot wheelchair system called Clever Chair. Clever Chair was founded by Valery Spiridonov who has been written about in almost all major news publications, including CNN, USA Today, The Daily Mail, and Reuters because of his disability and his interest in researching the feasibility of head transplantation. He is now the CEO of Clever Chair and is leading development alongside very talented robotics specialists, engineers, designers, and programmers. Right now, they are running an indiegogo campaign for Clever Chair. Valery says that their autopilot wheelchair system is affordable and has the potential to help millions of people with disabilities.
 
Clever Chair currently works indoors and is controlled with a smartphone application. With the tap of a button or a simple voice command, you can tell your wheelchair where to go and it’ll easily take you there without any further input. Clever Chair’s autopilot system works by using IR technology to scan your indoor living space and make sure that any objects in your house are mapped and avoided. The team at Clever chair is confident about their system being easy to use, accurate, and safe. They say that the user can take over manually at any point, but that it will never be necessary.
 
Clever Chair works with most existing electric wheelchairs. They have stated that they’d like to make the system as accessible and affordable as possible. Clever Chair is designed to be used in any indoor space, but their team has stated that they’d like to expand the system’s functionality as time goes on, so that users can enable the system outside.
 
The reality is that many people with disabilities struggle to operate their wheelchair and in many cases, the task is simply impossible. Valery says that cumbersome joystick controls are simply inadequate for this day and age and we need to do better. With the Clever Chair system, your wheelchair takes you to where you need to go autonomously and easily. This will undoubtedly free up users to focus on other things like talking to their friends or browsing the internet. Anyone who struggles to operate a wheelchair understands that it takes up all of your focus and limits your other activities, so having an autopilot wheelchair system can be invaluable.


 
Clever Chair is definitely inspired by technology from virtual reality headsets and from the previous robots that they have developed. Their autopilot system has three main components: a device that attaches to most modern electric wheelchairs, a camera system which has IR blasters that track your movements and map out your living space, and a free smartphone application that you’ll use to operate the system. The camera system uses IR blasters in a way that’s similar to room scale virtual reality, in that it maps out your living area and uploads that data to the Clever Chair smartphone application. From there, the developers say that you can pin your own locations into a list of locations in the app. All you need to do is tap a location or just say it via a voice command, and the Clever Chair will take you to that location.
 
Robotics development, tracking technology and application development has never been combined like this before. It’s an incredibly innovative and easy to use system that ends up being much less expensive than if they were to design a proprietary wheelchair. Frankly, the aptly named Clever Chair is only possible because they have such a diverse team from all sorts of technological backgrounds.
 
Clever Chair’s indiegogo campaign is well underway. They’ve decided to run an indiegogo campaign because they have a prototype and application ready, but they need funding for distribution, mass production, and for future development. The team behind Clever Chair is adamant about regularly updating Clever Chair, so that there are always new features for all users. Their updates will be available at no extra cost to all users with a Clever Chair system.
 
We asked them about what type of future plans that they might have, and they say that they’re currently focused on outdoor functionality and a more advanced tagging system. The Clever Chair team says that it’s relatively easy to get the system to work outside, but the problem is making sure that the user is one hundred percent safe at all times. One idea that they have is to use GPS technology and a friend who will tag along as a guide for the autopilot system outdoors. They’re also interested in expanding their item tagging technology.
 
Right now, the Clever Chair automatically senses items indoors, so that it can avoid them. In the future, they want to expand that by allowing the user to automatically tag items in their smartphone application. This info can then be uploaded and the Clever Chair system can use machine learning to even more accurately sense items.