Develop a customized rear mirror for Hanspeter

About Hanspeter

Hanspeter is 59 years old and has a congenital disability called muscular dystrophy which means that he has weakened muscles. He was never able to walk and thus uses a wheelchair since childhood. In his youth, Hanspeter did a commercial apprenticeship in an institution in Biel, and afterwards he was a co-owner of a small IT-company developing webapplications for many years. Today, he still works there part-time. Since 13 years, Hanspeter lives in Worben near Lyss (BE) in a three-room apartment with assistance.

Challenge

Hanspeter likes to drive around with his electrical wheelchair. However, sometimes it happens that a cyclist or a pedestrian overtakes him from behind without him noticing, leading to surprising and not seldom precarious situations. Standard rear mirrors for electric wheelchair are usually too large, too bulky and too cumbersome to adjust for Hanspeter. Thus, he would like to have a customized solution for his wheelchair, which can be mounted and demounted easily and can be adjusted by Hanspeter independently despite his decreased hand- and arm function.

Solution

After a bit of brainstorming, it got clear that Hanspeter’s team will develop a solution with a camera on the back of the wheelchair. A Raspberry Pi and a wide angle camera were connected and the video should be transmitted to the smartphone via Wifi. But how should the smartphone be connected on the wheelchair? It has to sit very tight in case Hanspeter drives over cobble stone, which can get very shaky. At the same time, the phone needs to be attachable and detachable with limited hand function. In the end, the team decided to use a small screen instead of the smartphone with is connected to the camera with a wite. Unfortunately, the time on Sunday was not sufficient to install a stable cable connection. The motivated team is now after the Hackathon trying to solve this problem to get a functioning rear view camera for Hanspeter.