I NDU ST RY L E A DER
INDEPENDENCE AND MOBILITY ARE FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS Written by: ROSA WALSTON LATIMER
In hindsight, what might seem an improbable path into the Complex Rehab Technology (CRT) industry for Pooja Viswanathan makes total sense once we know the entire story. Compelled by observation during a summer research internship, the 39 year old is now the CEO of Braze Mobility Inc. The company created the first blind spot sensor system for wheelchairs. The sensor provides multimodal alerts to the user and can be added to any wheelchair, transforming it into "a smart wheelchair."
TELL US ABOUT YOUR JOURNEY FROM ACADEMIA TO THE CRT INDUSTRY. My interest in assistive technology results from my passion for technology and health care. Soon after my undergraduate degree in computer science at the University of Waterloo, I was invited to complete a summer research internship at the University of Toronto. During this internship, I visited a long-term care facility where I saw many residents slumped over in manual wheelchairs. They didn’t have the strength to self-propel, and they were not allowed to use power wheelchairs because of safety concerns. I saw that situation as a violation of human rights in that independence and mobility are fundamental human rights. Unfortunately, the staff at the facility also had the formidable challenge of meeting the balance of autonomy with the safety of the residents. I decided to pursue research on how sensor technology could improve safety and independent navigation.
PLEASE GIVE US AN OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH PROCESS THAT LED YOU SPECIFICALLY TO THE BLIND SPOT SENSOR. I realized in the research process that focused on quantitative results, the numbers weren’t telling the whole story. I needed to gather more qualitative data to understand the user’s experience. So, after earning my Ph.D. in Robotics and Assistive Technology, I came back to the University of Toronto and Toronto Rehabilitation Institute to conduct post-doctoral research, where I dug deeper to understand people’s experiences with smart wheelchairs – their perceptions and specifically what their attitudes were relating to control. A lot of the technology of smart wheelchairs at the time was focused on systems that took control of the wheelchair. This was a natural progression because this work typically came out of robotics groups that were building machines to do the work of humans. In contrast, I was interested in understanding what control meant for wheelchair users and found the experience is
We had just begun to see sensor technology in the automotive industry at that time, but it was early on, so it was very much pioneering work. I started researching smart wheelchairs during my internship and chose to take this work further by basing my Ph.D. dissertation on it at the University of British Columbia. I completed the research with individuals with cognitive impairment in long-term care, built a system and conducted a great deal of testing. My approach was unique, because much of the other work in smart wheelchairs was not tested with the intended user. The technologies and assistive technologies my research group was building in the lab were being tested with intended users. This was an interesting experience, because I found potential for the technology. Still, there were also many challenges with usability and perception regarding the use of smart wheelchairs. This was between 2006 and 2012; still very early on, and we hadn’t seen much of this technology. Braze Mobility team retreat at Toronto Island, September 2021.
16
DIRECTIONS 2022.2
