Brawijaya University Professor Designs " Multi-feature Smart Wheel Currency" To Help People With Disabilities

Smart wheelchair novator for disabilities from Universitas Brawijaya (UB) Prof. Dr. Fitri Utaminingrum (left) (photo: dock. intermediate)

MALANG- Professor of Universitas Brawijaya (UB), Prof. Dr. Fitri Utamingrum designed smart wheelchairs to help and facilitate disability in everyday activities. This new innovation, dubbed the "Various-feature Smart Wheel Currency", is a solution for people with physical disabilities." Wheel curves in the market so far ( manual and electrical types) still require hand strength as a center of movement control, so that it will be a challenge for those who have hand sanitization in operating them," said Prof. Fitri in Malang, East Java, Saturday, June 24.Innovation of these multi-stable smart wheelchairs, he said, can be a solution to solve the problem. This smart wheel curve has several control features, namely manual, remote, speech recognition, human tracking, head movement, and eyeball movement,'' he said. In addition, this wheelchair is also equipped with a system of room-named board recognition, obstacle objects, and road surface-type classification. Another feature provided by this wheelchair is a feature of following guide motion or human followers. To support and improve security when operated, this wheelchair is also equipped with a security system, namely detection of barriers in the form of descending stairs, stairs, upwards, pillars, and so on. This feature is provided to provide a sense of safety to its users. This feature, he said, also facilitates the safety of its users when there is a slow response from users in avoiding barriers, then wheelchairs can be automatically stopped.

He said the wheelchair, there is also a feature to improve the comfort of its users by detecting road surfaces, both in the form of floor roads, asphalt, rocky, sandy, porous, and so on. The road surface type is integrated with the speed of the motor of the wheelchair. The advantage of this smart wheelchair has good maneuverability by prioritizing the safety and comfort of its users. The feature in smart wheelchairs applies adeep learning algorithm to obtain maximum accuracy and fast computing time. Fitri admits the weakness of this wheelchair, which requires a large and varied amount of data to effectively train the model and construction which is still relatively heavy. Another weakness is that the vision system will be disrupted performance if this smart wheelchair is operated on environmental conditions with dark lighting. "Therefore, I will continue to strive with various studies to improve more complete features as a fourth generation, which can later be folded and in just one button everything can be done," said Prof. Fitri.