Driverless wheelchair?

[greybeard]

Sounds like a typically impractical and unnecessary student project.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44573291

[Burgerman]

Interesting teaching/learning project exersize and likely to attract grant or investor money. The real goal. But ultimately a bit pointless I would have thought. Cars run on roads. So relatively standardised, with common rules, lights, signs, markings, obstacles.

Wheelchairs dont. And run next to lakes, uneven surfaces, pot holes, ramps, train platforms, quaysides, boat gangways, lifts, shops, resturants and busy pubs. Ultimately it is 100 times more dificult than the car. And even those are not very successful yet after throwing billions at it and thousands of PHD's by the likes of tesla, google etc...

So much like every new charge in seconds battery breakthrough, its all very acedemic.

[ex-Gooserider]

exactly the opposite of what Erik and I are trying to do with our hover-board project - we want to give the person in the chair more control not less - this just turns a person into baggage...

I've seen other videos of this sort, and to me it seems downright INSULTING that the professor types all seem to think we are so helpless as to need to be carried around like a cat in a carrier.... Can you say ABILIST????

Granted that there are some users that could benefit from technology of this sort - but I don't see that coming from these people - they want to "HELP" ALL of us "helpless cripples"....

ex-Gooserider

[foghornleghorn]

Could see it working in a controlled environment. For example as a replacement for a hospital porter pushing someone from a ward to the x-ray department then back to their bed afterwards.

[greybeard]

As if any NHS hospital could afford a fleet of them all parked up just in case a patient needed to use one! Personally I would prefer the cash to be spent on medical staff, beds and medicines.

[Burgerman]

The NHS like most socialist things is super wasteful. They are wasteful by nature since unlike a business or individual, its not their money they are wasting. And badly managed at every level. And replacing common sense at every level is mindless beurocracy, paper pushers, systems, assessements, meetings, and countless other methods of pushing the responsibility of every decision further along the line. But they also do need more money too.

[LROBBINS]

Many aspects of medical care in the U.S. run on the capitalist model - e.g. for doctor's fees. In some cases, the patient is the client and negotiates, in other cases it's an insurance co that's the client and does the negotiating. Nevertheless, the U.S. spends enormously more on health care than any of the semi-socialist to socialist national health schemes, including your NHS, and has by far the worst health outcomes - whether measured by infant mortality, maternal mortality, lifespan or any other measure anyone's thought of. Financial outcomes, for providers whether that be doctors, hospitals, drug companies or insurance companies, are of course munificent. In some ways "first, do no harm" has been replaced by "first, make a buck". Perhaps if patients could actually get meaningful, independent information about costs and benefits they could exert a meaningful pressure through prices and services, but I don't see that this is likely to happen.

[Burgerman]

The US health system is where we go if we want timely treatment for anything that the NHS cant, wont or refuse to do. And far better and faster than the NHS is. And while you call that US complex convoluted system capitalist I think its very far from that!

In the US you also dont get left on trollys in corridors, dying. And average waiting time at accident and emergency isnt measured in days!!! Or isnt an average of waiting 235 minutes or almost 4 hours if you turn up with burns, broken arm, or other emergency.
http://www.qualitywatch.org.uk/indicato ... ing-times# Average means 2 hour or 12 hour waits depending how busy. Yet I see massive waste, duplication, and inequalities of treatment or help everywhere.

Many accident and emergency units in around 10% of towns had to shut completely last winter as no beds or staff available at all. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/heal ... 73056.html

So colour me unconvinced... The NHS is a disaster. Having had a fair bit of experience in uk hospitals, and a little in france, I would say the french are way better, faster, and more efficient (I crashed bikes in a few countries!) than the UK. And they spend the same roughly. No comparison in efficiency. But still, the US is where we go when stuff gets serious.

I may add that I dont have a dentist for years. Cannot find one. All too busy, wont take new clients. And many are in a similar position. Try getting a dentist! The standard of healthcare in the US is massively better in the uk. They spend more on teeth alone than we do on everything put together. Its not a comparable service. Its equally hard to get to see a doctor. Which is why I self medicate and buy antibiotics overseas. NHS is useless. By the time a district nurse turns up, comes back days later for a sample, and then tells you they have given you a prescription because a doctor will not come out, it can be 10 days before they fob you off with a cheap wide band antibiotic that does nothing.

[foghornleghorn]

As if any NHS hospital could afford a fleet of them all parked up just in case a patient needed to use one! Personally I would prefer the cash to be spent on medical staff, beds and medicines.

The NHS is a bucket full of holes constantly spraying out money and instead of trying to plug some of them up the constant solution is to pour more and more in the top.

They have massive stocks of all sorts of equipment that are not currently / may never be used. The medical staff, beds and medicines can all be afforded but the thing the NHS is best at is wasting money on other stuff with no proper oversight as nobody is spending their own money that has to be earned.

[Burgerman]

You mean like the 3 hoist/lifts that I didnt want, 2 this year. I tried to refuse, but no way! 2 of them with ongoing service contracts where a man turns up in a van to look at it every 3 months... I have not used a hoist in 18 years. And wont. They are 1500 uk pounds a go, without haf a dozen "assessements" and associated paperwork, delivery men, contracts. For nothing. Similar waste is happening all over the country. And worse.

And in the next breath, they say: no money...

What they do have is armies of people in offices pushing paper assessements, and oftain pointless papers about diversity, ethnicity, waiting targets, rules, etc etc.. And they cant make a decision without hundreds of "panels" that meet monthly to decide who doesent get what they need it, and who gets stuff they dont want. All of which works in geological time between holidays and coffee breaks while never making any actual decisions about anything without a team of many holding each others hands. Its easir to kick the can down the road. Meanwhile they drink coffee while ignoring the thousands of papers with people desperately waiting sat in the inbox or abandoned in a draw. While theres a 10 year supply of carbon paper being supplied on contract that nobody knows a thing about and they dont need being used as a door stop. Its the socialist way.

Dont believe it? Go take a look.

[rlnguy]

without getting into the sad state of funding, and healthcare...
Most of the comments, made above, come from users here who have good function, and cognitive ability.
I have worked with a lot of users, who were not so fortunate.
For example-some were legally blind, while they could operate a powerchair, they may not have had the ability to see a step clearly-and would drive over the edge.
Others were children, just learning how to operate a power chair (or manual chair, for that matter).
I can see some useful tools coming out of this.
Who knows-maybe, at some point, Lennys daughter might benefit from this kind of project-even if it was just to be able to move around her home, safely.
(Lenny-I do not mean anything personal by mentioning Rachi, just one example, most of us reading here, know of)
While this project might not be for everyone, the reality is, not every wheelchair user has the skills and ability of most of us on this forum.