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April 2002
Smarts in the UK...
In recent months, another five Smart Wheelchairs have been delivered, including two chairs to Robert Henryson School in Dunfermline, funded by local Fife companies.
Smarts Down Under...
 The Smart Wheelchair system in Australia continues to be used successfully. Rob Rolleston, an OT at the Low Incidence Unit in Queensland, runs a loan service with the chair. Rob sends the chair all over the territory for staff and children to trial, and the latest borrower was Kate, who is ten years old and lives in Cairns, on the north coast. (Queensland is about the size of France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined, so supporting a Smart chair is a challenge!) Cairns is tropical with very high humidity, and Rob emailed to say that Kate was totally determined, didn’t want to stop and by the end of the session was totally exhausted.
 Kate started driving the chair with a miniature Specs switch embedded in a mitten, which she operates by tapping her hand on the wheelchair tray. Staff laid track for the wheelchair to follow in her school, home and to and from the bus drop off point so that she could drive around with her single switch. By the end of the ten week trial Kate had achieved excellent control over the chair with her switch and was starting to use a second switch for turning. Her parents said that she had gained 1.5 kg in weight and grown out of her boots, and said she was eating better, sleeping better at night and was happier.
Smarts across the Big Pond...
In May, Karen Kangas, a powered wheelchair ‘guru’ from the USA, and Lisa Rotelli from Adaptive Switch Laboratories in Texas visited CALL to discuss how the Smart controls could be exported to the USA and fitted to US wheelchairs. Paul Nisbet modified the Smart electronics so it can drive the wheelchair electronics fitted to US wheelchairs, and the Smart system is now available in a smaller, neater box which can be easily fitted to almost any wheelchair. Roger Dakin of Smile Rehab, the Smart Wheelchair manufacturers, was in the US in October to help launch the US version at the MedTrade exhibition. We hope that this development will increase the number of chairs and Smart systems being manufactured, reduce the cost, and make it more affordable by more people.
No more bruised shins! (maybe)
At the beginning of 2001 a Smart chair was delivered to a blind student attending the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh. The chair was purchased by the charity Whizz Kidz, and a small project grant from the Scottish Executive Education Department paid for development and fitting of a ‘Sonar Bumper’. This device stops the chair before it hits obstacles, and so far it has proved reasonably effective - staff say it is a distinct improvement on the standard hard rubber bumpers. The system needs more development before it can be fitted as standard to Smart Wheelchairs - for example to stop it detecting long grass!
Tell me more about the Smart Wheelchair
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