3 devices showcased at CES help improve the lives of those with physical impairments
A gaming controller for wheelchairs. A headset for blind people. A tongue-activated device controller. Enablement tech is emerging.
BY JEREMY LOSAW
The Consumer Electronics Show is the premier tech event of the year, and 2024 offered a technological feast.
AI is starting to make its way into all categories of consumer electronics. Big players announced bleeding-edge tech like the LG transparent TV and the $200 Rabbit R1 personal AI assistant.
These devices are great for a large majority of people, who have full access to their senses and physical abilities. However, the hidden trend of enablement tech is emerging.
Devices that help people who are differently abled are starting to make their way to the fore. Here are three companies that exhibited new enablement tech in the CES Eureka Park area that are looking to help improve the lives of people with physical impairments.
Kangsters Wheely-X
The Wheely-X is a gaming controller for wheelchairs.
The user wheels his or her chair up the ramp and onto the roller wheels at the back of the device, which is plugged into a computer. The sensors on the roller wheels pick up the motion of the wheels as the user spins them and turns that into motion inside a video game. The device can be used for bespoke wheelchair-based games or as a controller for other video games.
Company founder Kyrian Kim’s goal for the product is to allow people in wheelchairs to have access to fitness. His mom uses a wheelchair, and his experience living with her inspired him to want to help.
“As a fitness lover myself, I always wondered why, with my mom in a wheelchair, it is so hard to access fitness,” Kim said. “I want my mom as healthy as possible.”
Inspired by the impact Peloton was having in personal fitness, he set out to create a “Peloton for wheelchairs.”
Before starting the Wheely-X project, Kim spent time at a different company working on smart wheelchairs, so he thought his project would be easy.
A few years later, he admits the development was more difficult than expected. He has found it hard to make a device that is helpful for the different abilities of wheelchair users.
However, he is now selling his product and having success as a business-to-business product; approximately 80 percent of the devices in the field are at fitness and rehab centers. He would like to increase the device’s reach by pushing more toward the consumer market so that it can be an everyday fitness product.
A South Korea native, Kim is pushing to place Wheely-X in gyms in the United States to allow people able bodied and otherwise to experience the fun and challenge of using it, and to make it a part of fitness routines like a treadmill or elliptical.
Lumen
This headset for blind people uses Lidar technology like that of a self-driving car to guide them through the physical world. It maps terrain, detects obstacles and provides directional guidance by providing vibrating pulses to the temples that direct users left or right to maneuver around objects and navigate the environment.
Lumen was founded by Romanian inventor Cornel Amariei—named one of the most influential 10 people under 30 in Europe by Forbes USA. As the only able-bodied person in his immediate family, he understands how technology can remarkably improve the lives of disabled. He realized that the blind community was underserved, so he wanted to build a product to help.
“There are 14 million blind people in the world. … You only find two solutions which are actually used—the blind cane and the guide dog,” Amariei said, noting they are thousands of years old.
Guide dogs are effective but time consuming and expensive to train. And sometimes, they are not compatible with their owners or their lifestyle.
“What if we can use technology to do what a guide dog does without the drawbacks?”
Amariei and his Transylvanian team took self-driving car technology and scaled it down to proportions that would fit inside a headset. It was a huge challenge, but he and his team succeeded in shrinking the tech to use 10 percent of the power and 10 percent of the space.
Lumen has been tested with more than 250 blind people; Amariei even had live tests with blind people at his booth on the CES show floor.
The product, now in manufacturing and certification, will be on the market this year in eastern Europe and land in the States in 2025.
Augmental
This tongue-activated device controller, shaped like an orthodontic retainer, has a circuit embedded in it to pick up pressure and movement of the tongue to allow control of devices like smartphones or computers.
Founder Tomas Vega wanted to allow disabled people to be able to participate in the digital world.
“The world is no longer a world of atoms but a world of bits. If you are excluded from the digital arena, you are excluded from the world,” he said.
Augmental has been in development for four years. It relies on modern tech—such as 3D printing and scanning and flexible circuit technology—to make each device work and customize it for the unique mouth physicality of each user. The device is now in the marketplace and being used extensively, with some people using it for 8 hours a day.
Vega admitted it has been a struggle to find investors to buy into enablement tech but believes the value of including marginalized people in the digital, augmented and virtual worlds is worth the effort of development.
Details: wheely-x.com, dotlumen.com,
augmental.tech