- [Rory] When I was in high school, I wasn't quite sure
what I would do with my life.
I wanted to be in something that was
maybe a little more fast-pace.
I started running and I wound up actually in third place
in the US Army Europe championships.
It was kind of natural after I got injured
to get into wheelchair racing.
A truck ran right over my chest
So, had a lot of internal damage,
as well as the spinal cord injury.
The first wheelchair I got was this
80-pound behemoth, it was just terrible.
And, my thought was-oh, we could do better than this.
And we need to.
I'm Dr. Rory Cooper, I am the director
of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories.
My wife likes to say that I was
a better engineer than an athlete.
All right, let's do this one first and see if it works, right?
No, that's it.
Wooh, just a little spark fly. - Little spark.
- [Engineer] It did that yesterday too.
- [Rory] Now that should be much better.
Just by looking at it, right?
- [Engineer] Yeah.
- [Rory] I wanted to create a lab
where we could apply advanced engineering
in medical rehabilitation research
to improve the mobility function and quality of life
of individuals with disabilities,
especially our veteran population.
We're also integrators of technology, taking knowledge
from internet of things, and cloud computing,
and wearable computing, and artificial intelligence,
and bringing them together.
So, all these are ultrasound sensors, right?
- [Engineer #2] Ultrasound, laser.
- [Rory] Laser-range, right?
Range-finder.
- [Engineer #2] IR-sensors.
- [Rory] So, the idea is, they have all of these sensors
and then say, okay, it's this shape and this dimension,
this color, and then estimate what it is.
We try to be a soup to nuts-type laboratory.
So, the idea is that we can go from a concept
all the way, really, to a clinical practice guideline.
What you want to see is the person, as much as you can,
to fit the wheelchair more like you would a shoe,
or a glove, or a prosthetic limb.
So, we worked on how you optimize the wheelchair
to the individual and then we worked on better algorithms,
about how to filter the signal coming from the body.
Which led to more people being able to drive independently.
These were people that were either staying at home
or being pushed around by a friend or a family member,
or health-care provider and now in independent mobility.
We broke that non-traditional mold
and it's just continued to evolve from there.
- [Engineer] So, instead of having the user
controlling robot manually, we can put in
some autonomous function, like the object recognition.
The camera actually sees where the objects are
and then let the robot figure out
how to pick up the objects for the user.
And they also let them to help them eating,
drinking, dressing, opening doors, going out for shopping.
- [Rory] One of the things we've always believed in,
is that individuals with disabilities
can be clinicians and engineers and inventors
and entrepreneurs and business people,
and I've wanted that to be part of our model,
that we have people with
or without disabilities working together.
As we should have in all society.
You know, we see people that've had a lot of tragedy
in their life in many cases, and that we're here to help.
But it's also important that you can create
a wonderful technology, but if you can't get it
on the market, you can't get it reimbursed,
you can't get it into people's hands,
you know, what impact did you really have?
I'm very pleased with what we've accomplished
but I also know that we have a long way to go
and there's still a lot of challenges
to continue addressing and hopefully,
continue to make pace on our goal
of making this a better world for everyone.
- What's more rewarding than that, right?
(hopeful music)
- [Narrator] Thanks for watching this episode
of Superhuman.
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