Smart Chair Upgrade System with Sensor-Modulated Control Bus
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current motorized mobile chair systems lack the ability to adapt to the varying abilities and needs of users with different physiological and cognitive disabilities, as they are not equipped with advanced electronics, sensor systems, and software to provide safe, secure, and social independence.
Innovation Solution
An upgrade system that transforms a motorized mobile chair into a smart motorized mobile chair by integrating a processing system with multiple processors, object detection sensors, and a processing unit that modifies control signals based on sensor data to enhance user-specific customization, health monitoring, and situational awareness.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If advanced electronics, sensor systems, and software are integrated into motorized mobile chairs, then user-specific customization, health monitoring, and situational awareness are improved, but device complexity and manufacturing costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system is divided into separate functional modules including sensor systems, processing units, communication modules, and control systems. Each module performs a specific function (e.g., object detection, health monitoring, wireless communication) that can be independently developed, tested, and upgraded without affecting the entire chair system.
Solution Approach 2:
The processing system is designed to perform multiple functions through a unified architecture that handles sensor data acquisition, user profile management, health monitoring, situational awareness, and communication with external devices. This multi-functional approach reduces overall system complexity compared to having separate dedicated systems for each function.
2Reliability
If multiple processors and sensor systems are integrated, then situational awareness and safety are improved, but device complexity and ease of operation worsen
Solution Approach 1:
A communication bus serves as an intermediary that standardizes data exchange between multiple processors and sensor systems. This intermediary layer abstracts the complexity of inter-component communication, allowing processors to focus on their specific functions while the communication bus handles data routing, protocol management, and synchronization.
Solution Approach 2:
Sensor systems continuously provide feedback data to processors about the chair's operational state, environment, and user condition. This feedback enables real-time safety monitoring and automatic adjustments without requiring complex manual intervention, as the system self-regulates based on sensor inputs and predefined safety parameters.
3Adaptability or versatility
If sensor data processing and control signal modification are implemented, then responsiveness and adaptability are improved, but processing time and computational requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
User profiles and preferences are pre-configured and stored in memory before actual operation. When the chair needs to adapt to user needs, it retrieves pre-stored profile data rather than computing preferences in real-time. This preliminary preparation significantly reduces processing time during operational decision-making while maintaining high adaptability.
Solution Approach 2:
Different processing priorities are assigned to different sensor data streams and control functions based on their criticality. Time-sensitive safety-critical functions receive higher processing priority with dedicated computational resources, while less critical functions use available processing capacity. This localized quality of service approach ensures responsive handling of critical events without requiring all processing to be equally fast.
Data Source
AI summary
An upgrade system upgrades a motorized mobile chair to a smart motorized mobile chair. The motorized mobile chair has a processing system comprising at least two processors. The upgrade system comprises a plurality of object detection sensors and at least one processing unit connected between at least a first one of the at least two processors of the processing system and at least a second one of the at least two processors of the processing system. The processing unit receives sensor data from at least one of the plurality of object detection sensors, receives at least one control signal transmitted from the first processor, the control signal comprising data, modifies or does not modify the data of the control signal based on at least the sensor data, and transmits the modified or not modified control signal, the transmitted control signal to be received by the second processor.