Play and Exploration are the cornerstones of learning. A child with poor co-ordination and control, communication problems, or who cannot walk, has less chance to explore and play and faces greater challenges when they do so.
IDEAS for FUN and GAMES –with the Smart Wheelchair – The smart wheelchair can provide a fun, exciting and motivating environment in which to learn. There are a whole host of games and activities which have been created to assist with this learning process – click here for more information
Mobility is fun, exciting and motivating. Being able to move opens up new opportunities for play and exploration. Mobile children and adults are more curious, active, assertive and learn more effectively. People with very severe physical, communication, sensory or learning difficulties have even more to gain from powered mobility because they have very few other ways to demonstration their individuality and experience control. Yet controlling a powered wheelchair is hard for many people with severe disabilities.
What sort of work might you share? When you’re driving a powered wheelchair there are several decisions to be made and tasks to be performed.
Where you want to go
What sequence of movements must be made in order to get there?
To make these movements, you must be able to start, stop and steer the wheelchair. You might also have to try to avoid unexpected obstacles or get out of trouble if you do collide with them. The Smart wheelchair is able to help with some of the more simple tasks to do with moving or dealing with collisions. The central idea is that you concentrate on learning and practising one task while the wheelchair takes care of another. For example, you might want the wheelchair to deal with bumps, or guide you from room to room, while you get on with the important things like deciding when to move.
The Line follower is a black box mounted on the front of the chair, with infra-red sensors which detect retro reflective tape. The sensors work regardless of background light and don’t care whether the line of on dark or light floor coverings, whether carpet or lino. The Line Followers function is to detect where the line is in relation to the chair so that the chair can follow it.
The line follower might be considered for several reasons and for several groups of children
You can think of the Smart wheelchair as an assistant which can take some of the load from you whilst you are learning to drive or communicate and which makes it simpler to transfer skills from one task
Beat the vicious circle
For a person with all these problems, learning is difficult. It’s a vicious circle.
Lack of physical control means no mobility – no mobility restricts the ability to explore the surrounding thus leading to an inability to learn how to learn.
Communicating with others involves new learning. Tasks like tracking
The Smart Wheelchair was designed to help by providing:-
A common learning environment for communication, mobility and some structured play and exploration, in which skills transfer from task to task
Some relief from the responsibility for mundane mobility tasks, whilst new skills are required.
The Smart-Box is the intelligence behind the platform capabilities. It acts as the hub of the system and features a comprehensive range of user adjustable controls such as line following, speed, sensors, auditory confirmations and motion controls. Its modular design also means that the Smart-Box system can be easily fitted to other compatible powerchairs. More details . .