University of Pittsburgh Kicks Off Project to Imagine a Better Wheelchair

Imagine grabbing a carton of milk from the refrigerator in the morning. For most of us, that task takes seconds.

Or imagine making a cup of coffee with your coffee maker on the counter. Again, it takes a minute or two.

But for someone who is severely disabled, taking milk out of the fridge with the existing wheelchair and assistive technology could take 45 minutes to an hour; making the coffee, 10 to 15 minutes.

“We want to get that done when it takes a few seconds,” said Rory Cooper, director of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL), an institute under the University of Pittsburgh and part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“We want to get it done when you open a refrigerator as naturally as possible. We want to be able to get people to go where they want to go.”