5D Robotics Partners With WHILL for Personal Mobility
Often forgotten is that people confined to wheelchairs might also have difficulties with their arms or hands. The elderly and infirm in nursing homes, for example, are pushed to the cafeteria, pushed to the rec room, pushed back to their room.
The chairs are already electric — can’t they drive themselves around? 5D Robotics (Booth #2549) has partnered with WHILL, a personal mobility device company, to do just that.
WHILL’s power wheelchair, the Model M, uses a 5D platform that allows a user to easily create a virtual path.
Here’s how simple it is: give an aide — or the wheelchair user — an electronic tag to hold, then walk or ride the path.
“People can get in a cart and press a button, and it will take them down the hall to eat,” says Brian Aker, director of operations. “A worker doesn’t have to push them.”
The program uses 5D’s UWB Positioning (ultra-wideband technology), which provides precision location to five centimeters; Virtual Rail, a precise electronic path; Follow technology, which can enter a target location; and Guarded Motion, a collision-avoidance system that prevents the user from striking anything that wanders into its path.
“There are airports that are interested in it,” says Aker.
Warehouses, or any site with robots programmed on a set route, could replace the expensive system of relaying magnetic tape.
“It can be used on cars, drones, anything,” Aker says.
In other news, last week 5D announced the formation of a new 5D Aerial division, created with the acquisition of the industrial assets and intellectual property of Aerial MOB, an aerial cinematography company.
The new division will provide 3-D mapping, photogrammetry, and thermal and multi-spectral imagery data for oil and gas, utilities, construction and other commercial applications. Aerial MOB’s Treggon Owens joins 5D Robotics as chief innovation officer.
