Toronto’s Braze Mobility Gives Any Wheelchair Blind Spot Sensors

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A Toronto company has built what it says are the world’s first blind spot sensors for wheelchairs — and the reason it exists is a visit its founder made to a long-term care home in 2006.

Braze Mobility founder Pooja Viswanathan explained the problem to Double Tap. “The majority of wheelchair users actually experience accidents, which often can lead to property damage or wheelchair damage, in some cases hospitalisation.”

Braze’s answer attaches to a chair the owner already has. “We’ve developed the world’s first blind spot sensors that can be attached to any wheelchair, essentially transforming it into a smart wheelchair,” she said. “Our system detects obstacles in the environment and then offers feedback to the user through intuitive lights, sounds and vibrations.”

“Like taking away someone’s legs”

The idea came from something Viswanathan saw and could not let go of.

“Back in 2006, I believe it was, was my first visit to a long-term care facility,” she said. “That’s where I saw a lot of residents slumped over in manual wheelchairs that they didn’t have the strength to self-propel. And they weren’t actually being allowed to use power wheelchairs because of safety concerns that the staff had.”

The staff worried about property damage and collisions with other residents. Viswanathan saw it differently. “I saw that as really a violation of a fundamental human right. Saying that someone can’t have a power wheelchair when they don’t have another means of independent mobility is essentially like taking away someone’s legs.”

The solution came from looking sideways at the car industry, which was then beginning to put parking sensors on higher-end models. “If cars can have sensors, why can’t wheelchairs — especially if that can offer new opportunities for independent mobility?”

It is not always the diagnosis

One pattern Viswanathan described is worth sitting with. When a resident with a cognitive impairment starts having collisions, the conclusion drawn is often that their condition is worsening and they can no longer drive safely.

“In some of the scenarios that we’ve helped out in, we’ve essentially discovered that the residents were in fact very capable of driving,” she said. “They just didn’t have eyes in the back of their head. And nobody does.”

The real culprit was frequently the chair itself. Extended leg rests make it genuinely hard to see where your own feet end. Users driving in a tilted position lose sight of the sides and the rear. “The configuration that they’re driving in can be a barrier to their visibility, of spatial awareness,” she said. “That’s the problem that we’re solving here.”

How the system works

The main unit is called the Sentina. It mounts at the rear of a power or manual wheelchair and carries five sensors, covering roughly 180 degrees horizontally and 45 to 50 degrees vertically.

Alongside it are smaller sensors called Echo Heads, which can be fitted anywhere on the chair and give a tighter cone of about 45 to 50 degrees in both directions. A typical installation puts the Sentina at the back and an Echo Head on each side at the front, so a user has coverage behind and to the periphery when negotiating doorways and lifts.

A controller handles the alerts. In short range mode, an obstacle within two feet raises a yellow warning light and within one foot a red danger light, with the bottom row of lights indicating obstacles behind and the top row in front. Long range mode doubles both thresholds. The lights track the obstacle as it moves, and the system also gives audio feedback.

Resources

• Braze Mobility: brazemobility.com