With their product, a smart multi-function wheelchair for people with disabilities, the Three Idiots team, made up of three students, Tran Quang Nam, Nguyen Van Tay and Duong Nguyen Khanh Nam (class 09ECE, in the advanced programme in digital systems at Da Nang University of Science and Technology), excellently won first prize in the Central region and nationwide in the Microcontroller Application Design Competition organised by Texas Instruments.
In April 2013, Three Idiots began coming up with an idea to enter the competition. With advice and professional help from Dr. Pham Van Tuan (Deputy Director of the Centre of Excellence and Deputy Head of the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications at Da Nang University of Science and Technology), Three Idiots set about building a smart wheelchair for people with disabilities.
Although the topic is not new, its creativity lies in the fact that the wheelchair uses Texas Instruments’ advanced technologies to ensure that the system works stably, is highly safe and can handle unexpected situations.
With a simple device worn on the head like a hat, a person with a disability using the wheelchair only needs to shake their head to control it. If the user tilts their head forward, the wheelchair moves forward; if they tilt it back, it reverses; and if they tilt it left or right, it turns left or right.
To make the user feel comfortable and avoid confusion between directions, digital signal processing algorithms have been applied to divide the head’s range of movement into zones, or appropriate signal thresholds. Compared with controlling the wheelchair (in four directions), controlling a computer mouse is much more complicated, because “the mouse moves in many directions” and there is also the click action. So when sitting in the wheelchair and controlling the mouse on the computer screen, the user must also tilt their head in the direction they want the cursor to go. The more the head tilts, the faster the mouse moves.
For actions such as selecting a file or clicking the mouse, the user uses their eyes. The left eye corresponds to the left mouse button, and the right eye to the right mouse button. These control actions do not easily produce accurate results, but team leader Tran Quang Nam affirmed: “The mouse sensitivity has been fine-tuned so that users can move the mouse to each small position or icon on the computer screen. With eye movements, we have made the system able to distinguish natural blinking, which prevents dry eyes, from deliberate blinking by the user. So there is no discomfort at all for the user”.
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| The Three Idiots team |
Three Idiots’ wheelchair also has a very special feature that perhaps no other wheelchair on the market has: sending SMS messages and making calls to a family member’s phone. Users can send a text message and call a family member when they feel they need help. In particular, in a passive situation, for example if the wheelchair falls over, the system will automatically send a text message and call a family member immediately.
From a passion…
The three young men, Tran Quang Nam, Nguyen Van Tay and Duong Nguyen Khanh Nam, share a passion. However, to successfully build the multi-function wheelchair for people with disabilities, the team also faced many difficulties.
Specialising in electronics and telecommunications, with little experience in mechanics and little time, the three young men had to work and teach themselves, studying documents as they went. The electronic components used to build the wheelchair were not available in Da Nang, so they had to be imported from Ho Chi Minh City. Importing components usually took 4-5 days, and during those 4-5 days the team could do nothing but… wait. When they finally had all the components, disagreements arose among the team members about the manufacturing method. Unable to agree, the team had to try each member’s method in turn to produce the best product.
“Many times, because we could not agree, everyone took turns working continuously, and components kept breaking and being damaged, so costs rose sharply. Sometimes the arguments were fierce and the difficulties made us discouraged, but our passion for building was greater, so we stuck with it to the end and achieved the result we have now. By taking part in building the wheelchair, we learned how to divide the work according to each person’s strengths at the right time, avoiding disruption to each person’s studies and private work and reducing conflict.”, Van Tay – a member of Three Idiots, said.
Three Idiots’ smart wheelchair is considered a product of great humanitarian significance, especially in a developing country like Vietnam.
On the market today there are wheelchairs that use joystick control (hand control), eye control or thought control. However, joystick-controlled wheelchairs are not suitable for people who are paralysed in all their limbs or have lost their arms and legs. Eye-controlled wheelchairs are too expensive. Thought-controlled wheelchairs also use a head-worn device, but it is large and has many wires to read a person’s thoughts.
Three Idiots’ wheelchair costs only about 10 million VND, has more features, and in particular the feature of sending text messages to family members. Although the head-controlled wheelchair still has certain shortcomings, its potential for practical application is very high.
Team leader Tran Quang Nam shared: “Three Idiots will try to perfect this wheelchair so that it becomes more convenient and safer for users. We hope that after the competition, the team’s product will find a suitable sponsor to be produced for the Vietnamese market and help society”.
Huyen Trang – Mot The Gioi