User Research

Our User Research team has been working hard to push for a user centered design and functionality. They have worked with around 70 wheelchair users and experts to improve the project's implementation. This year they were present at CHI 2019 to present their work and compete in the Student Research Competition, making it to the final round and placing third. If you are interested in participating as a user in our studies, please get in contact with Isabella at ilgomezt@ucsd.edu.

Check out our accepted CHI submission!

Embedded Systems

Dealing with sensors, microcontrollers, PID, PCBs, and piles of code is only the surface of the Embedded Systems team’s responsibilities. Some of the Embedded Systems team’s goals are: safety for the user, implementing the use of the wheelchair joystick, optimizing our code, and implementing backwards facing ToF sensors. If you would like to join the team or would like more information, contact Jesus at jvfausto@ucsd.edu.

Take a look at some code on our Github!

Navigation

Our Navigation team is the head behind the full autonomy of our wheelchair design. They take control of the obstacle detection and path planning . This team uses ROS, SLAM, Amazon Alexa, and depth perception cameras to accomplish their difficult tasks. If you are feeling up to the challenge of joining our Navigation team please contact us at our team’s email address: smartwheelchair@eng.ucsd.edu.

Take a look at some code on our Github!

Prototype

The Prototype team is paramount to the success of the SmartWheelchair project. Using SolidWorks, our small Prototype team has created all the sensor mounts on our wheelchair and even some pieces for user protection. This summer the Prototype team has and is working on mounts for backwards facing ToF sensors, emergency button hold, updated encoder mounts, and more!

To join our Prototype team please email smartwheelchair@eng.ucsd.edu.

Jack Silberman

Jack Silberman has over 20 years of experience in automation and robotics. He started working in robotics while pursuing his B.S. in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Silberman did robotics post graduate work in England and holds a masters degree from PUC-Rio in Mechanical Engineering and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University where his research was on mobile field robotics reliability. Dr. Silberman has worked in educational robotics, NASA sponsored mobile field robotics, semiconductor automation, biotech and medical devices. Currently, Dr. Silberman is the commercial QA area manager for Canada and Latin America with Abbott Diabetes Care (ADC), and a lecturer at UC San Diego in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Deborah Forster

Research Specialist

Trained in behavioral ecology and cognitive science, Forster is currently a research specialist in the Contextual Robotics Institute and affiliated faculty in the Design Lab at UC San Diego. Having studied social complexity and distributed cognition in wild baboons, Forster then extended her professional engagements in the contexts of automotive design, architecture education, and art-science collaborations. Returning to UCSD and completing her PhD in cognitive science in 2012, Forster is typically embedded within engineering / computation / design-centered research efforts that also tracks behavior in complex socio-technical systems. From kid-friendly robots (RUBI) to automated pain detection in humans and other mammals (horses, dogs, monkeys and rats), Forster supports the development of interdisciplinary research networks (today’s ‘convergence science’) and continues to forge creative connections with art and design in both academia and industry.

Sayan Mondal, B.Sc.

Sayan Mondal is a 2nd year graduate student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department, with a specialization in Dynamics and Controls. He is the Teaching Assistant of MAE/ECE 148 - Introduction to Autonomous Vehicles. He is a controls and motion planning researcher in Contextual Robotics Institute, UC San Diego. His research interests are in Computer Vision and in Controls. Also, he is involved in robots design and fabrication. He is a member of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN), the Engineering Honor Society. In future, he wants to build his career as an Autonomous Vehicle Engineer. Fun fact, he is also good in sports and is always down to play soccer!

Yinglong Miao, B.Sc.

Yinglong Miao is a first-year Computer Science Master student at UCSD. He obtained BSc. in Computer Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is interested in applications of optimization and neural networks in Robotics, especially in Motion Planning and control. He also has research interests in Computer Vision. Previously he has participated in theoretical research about graph theory and computational complexity in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is generally interested in Mathematics and Physics, and has passion for understanding the world.

Jesus Fausto

Jesus Fausto is a second year UCSD student pursuing a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. His current robotics experience comes from working with his high school robotics team. He is ready to learn and help the SmartWheelchair project over a long period of time.

Jesi Miranda

Jesi Miranda is a 2nd year UCSD student pursuing a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. His interests are in power systems, autonomous navigation and machine learning. Jesi’s future plans are to integrate his skills to major projects for the benefit of the public and pursue a master's degree.

Gaurav Parmar

Gaurav Parmar is a 3rd year undergraduate student pursuing a degree in Computer Science. In the past he has been the software team lead for Colossus, a static fire rocket engine test stand being built by SEDS. He is interested in robotics and machine learning and excited to augment his skillset.

Isabella Gomez Torres

Isabella is a 2nd year undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at UCSD. Currently Isabella works with low-level sensors and leads the team’s User Research progress. This is her second year working for the SmartWheelchair project and she is excited to continue.

Tanish Jain

Tanish is a third-year undergraduate pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering. He is currently pursuing coursework in Machine Learning & Controls, and is deeply interested in robotics, having worked on several robotics projects over the years. He is passionate about working on technologies which can bring positive, tangible transformation in people’s lives.

Michael Li

Michael is a 4th year in electrical engineering, with a depth of circuits and systems. He loves building and prototyping systems, having built an IoT alcohol gel dispenser and a wifi controlled lighting system. He’s excited to work on the smart wheelchair project and hopes his contributions will significantly help the project reach its goal. He hopes one day he will be a master at designing both digital and analog circuits. Fun fact, he also loves cooking tasty food for himself in his free time.

Stephen Duan

Stephen Duan is a second-year undergraduate student at UC San Diego majoring in Electrical Engineering with a depth in machine learning and a minor in Cognitive Science. Before joining the SmartWheelchair Project, he was the team lead of IEEE quarterly project and a member of the IEEE Quadcopter annual project. Stephen is passionate about the application of machine learning and computer vision, and is always excited to learn new skills.

Richard To

Richard To is a second-year UCSD undergraduate student pursuing a degree in Computer Engineering. He has a passion for computer vision and the implementation of this technology into the SmartWheelchair for navigation. He is a sub-team lead for the navigation team in the SmartWheelchair project working with autonomous navigation. Richard is enthusiastic to be able to work and provide his skill set towards the project.

Evan Serrano

Evan Serrano is a 1st year undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering, with a minor in Mathematics. He began programming in High School and has developed a passion for Software Engineering. He has interests in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Robotics and is excited to help work on the SmartWheelchair Project.

Fernando Lopez

Fernando Lopez is a junior Electrical Engineering student at University of California San Diego. His main interests are aerospace and robotics. Before getting involved in the Open Sourced Smart Wheelchair project, he has been working on the Colossus Static Fire Test Stand project from SEDS UCSD. He has also worked as a pinsetter technician and participated in robotics competition during high school. Currently, Fernando is looking to delve more into the software side of robotics using mapping, localization, and navigation algorithms for control.

Zlata Bobyr

Originally from a small Siberian town of Russia, Zlata Bobyr is a rising freshman at Princeton University (class of 2023). She is interested in a wide array of fields revolving around Data Science, Machine Learning, User Experience, Artificial Intelligence, and Statistical Research. She is always open and excited for opportunities to experience new professional and academic endeavors.

CHI 2019

The User Research team were recommended to make a submission into CHI thanks to their work for ECE-SRIP 2018. With this in mind, the team made their first ever submission and were accepted. Their work is displayed in the ACM Digital Library and is linked to bellow.

Check out our accepted CHI submission!

Want to look over our final CHI presentation? You can find it here.

Coding our Safety

This summer the Embedded Systems team has the important goal of making our prototype safe enough for user testing. For our team to accomplish this tremendous task we have considered the following safety measures in our code:

1. Emergency Stop Button

2. Watchdog Timer

3. Sensor Edge-case regulation

These elements are meant to protect the user in case of a malfunction in our setup both hardware and software wise.

An Emergency Stop

The Emergency Stop Button gives the user the ultimate fail-safe mechanism to override the system and stop the chair.

Watchdogs are looking over our Code!

A Watchdog Timer has the function of reseting the system when there is a stall in the main loop of the program. You can learn more about Watchdog Timers on Mbed here. We have implemented this to restart the system upon any mishaps during the any of the main code’s processes cause by, for example, hardware issues like a noise spike on the power supply, which occasionally occur.

Strange behavior: edge-cases

To protect the movement of our wheelchair prototype from sensor malfunctions we are taking a look into the edge-cases of our different sensors. We want to make sure that we do not have false positives or false negatives to protect our user.

Building comprehensive edge-case scenarios for our ToF and IMUs is currently in the plan of the Embedded Systems team.

Take a look at some of our code on Github!