Ron Carrico began Kavita Krishnaswamy’s private tour of the San Diego Air & Space Museum near a replica of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, describing the torturous 33-hour flight across the Atlantic in such a way that isn’t printed in history books. As the two made their way through the facility, Krishnaswamy, a doctoral candidate in computer science, waved hello to fellow patrons and paused to see the planes hanging from the ceiling. The only thing atypical about her visit was that she wasn’t technically at the museum, which is located in Balboa Park, Calif. Extraordinarily, she was more than 2,600 miles away sitting in front of a computer in Baltimore County, Md, controlling a five-foot-tall, roving BeamPro robot equipped with a wide-angle camera and a 20-inch screen that projected her face at eye level.
Originally built to automate industry, to ease business interactions for remote employees or to simply entertain, robotic technologies are taking on a significantly nobler purpose: assisting those with disabilities in their day-to-day lives. Text-to-speech capabilities on iPhones allow the blind to read anything online. Doctors and therapists use robots to make virtual rounds to patients who cannot physically leave their homes. And at the San Diego Air & Space Museum, which received a $25,000 grant from the NBCUniversal Foundation, people with severe disabilities can use innovative “telepresence” BeamPro devices to partake in a historical and cultural adventure they’d never be able to experience otherwise.
APPLY: The San Diego Air & Space Museum is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
The museum keeps two robots charged at all times, ready to give BEAM tours to those who can’t make it to Southern California. Katrina Pescador, the museum’s archival director, saw the robotic technology’s potential after the manufacturer held a conference nearby, quickly signing up to offer virtual museum tours to people who are hospitalized or mobility challenged. “I want people to have the freedom to experience the world and not be locked up some place,” says Pescador, whose daughter has a disability. “But it’s also important that people in the world see other people with disabilities. All of us need to be interacting together.”
The device provides those with physical disabilities a unique opportunity to explore the world in a way that clicking through images on Google never can. The BeamPro allowed Krishnaswamy, who has spinal muscular atrophy, to enjoy a rare experience of free movement. “It gave me an immersive experience like I was physically there,” she recalls. “I could move around. I had the ability to turn. I could see people and interact with people,” she adds. “Just moving around on my own without any limitation and seeing somebody eye-to-eye: that’s really a new experience.”
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Pushing application of the technology even further, Carrico’s colleague Ross Davis is attempting to use the BeamPro for virtual school field trips. Davis, the museum’s education resources coordinator, believes it’s the ideal way for budget-conscious schools to engage students. Educators can log on and within seconds, get kids excited about the physics involved in getting 1,500-pound object soaring through the air. “We want to make it easy. We like easy,” Davis, a blunt former Navy pilot, says. (Offering top students a chance to command a robot is a sure-fire way to motivate a group of kids, he adds.) Even better is a virtual field trip’s ability to host low-income children. “We want to bring in the [kids] who wouldn’t get to visit, whose parents are too busy and don’t have time or money to buy tickets,” Davis says.
The school tours are still a project in process. Davis has tried at least three times to connect with one classroom, but the San Diego public school system has a firewall he hasn’t yet been able to circumvent. Once that basic connectivity issue is fixed, Davis has big plans: He envisions integrating 3-D diagrams, YouTube clips and sound bites into his guided tour to bring some of the aircraft hanging in the museum roaring into motion. From there, he’ll offer telepresence tours to anyone in the nation — enabling those with limited financial resources to have the same learning opportunities as their wealthier counterparts.
If the school visits work as well as Krishnaswamy’s tour, the program will be a success. Months later, she still raves that, “It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.” A graduate student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Krishnaswamy studies how technology can assist others with disabilities like herself. The BeamPro is a prime example of what she wants to develop: a device that let her experience life in a different way.
As Krishnaswamy viewed the exhibits with Carrico, she thought about how quickly technology advances. In 1903, the Wright Brothers could barely keep a plane off the ground for more than a few seconds. Fast forward to 1969 when men rocketed into space and landed on the Moon. In a way, it’s fitting that Krishnaswamy is using a robot to experience the history of progress on display. In comparison to how fast she can jet into the museum from across the country, a trans-Atlantic flight feels like no big deal. If Lindbergh could see the BeamPro today, surely he would feel a twinge of jealousy.
The San Diego Air & Space Museum is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
Tag: robotics
When This Sixth Grader Couldn’t Go to School, a Robot Took Her Place
When you were a kid, did you ever hope the future would be like The Jetsons? Well, at a middle school in Danville, Pennsylvania, the future is happening right now.
Thanks to the innovations of a Seattle-based company, Double Robotics, Maddie Rarig, a bedridden sixth grader, is able to attend class in real time, the Associated Press reports. The 11-year-old, who is recovering from a spinal injury, is connected to her classes via a robot that’s basically a iPad connected to a Segway. With a simple smartphone, Maddie can control the robot’s movements right from her bedroom.
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Incredibly, this robotized version of Maddie seamlessly interacts with her teachers and classmates and can even join group discussions. “We call the robot Maddie, because it is very much her in the classroom,” her math teacher, Shayna Heitzelman, told the wire service. “We positioned the face of the robot where she can see everything going on in front of the class. Maddie can move closer or farther away as needed. She can turn the robot around to face the class. The thing is, and this is amazing, she has this huge grin on her face, which you can see on the robot. And the kids, her friends, love it.”
Maddie’s mother, Kristin Rarig, told the AP that the robot is helping her daughter “get better faster.”
ALSO: How One Man’s Trip to Toys ‘R’ Us Brought Mobility to Hundreds of Disabled Kids
Each of these robots costs about $2,100, not including the cost of the iPad. If this sounds a bit expensive, it’s because the technology is still quite new. But once these robots becomes more accessible, it could open a whole new slew of possibilities in the classroom. Not only would it help kids who are stuck at home due to illness or disability, but it could even be used when children can’t attend school due to inclement weather. Robots in the classroom would certainly would’ve been helpful during this particularly long and bitter winter, as it would have virtually eliminate the days school kids missed due to snow.
A world that’s like The Jetsons doesn’t seem so far off now, does it?
How One Man’s Trip to Toys ‘R’ Us Brought Mobility to Hundreds of Disabled Kids
Cole Galloway’s workspace at the University of Delaware resembles a ransacked toy store. There are piles of plastic tubing, swim noodles, stuffed animals, and battery-powered Jeep and Barbie cars everywhere. But Galloway, 48, is a physical therapy professor and infant behavior expert whose lab has a very clear mission: to provide mobility to children with cognitive or physical disabilities.
Galloway started his infant behavior lab to study how children learn to move their bodies. He was particularly interested in finding ways to close what he calls “an exploration gap” — the difference between typically developing children and those who suffer from mobility issues due to conditions like cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. In 2007 Sunil Agrawal, a professor of mechanical engineering at the university, approached Galloway in a conversation he says went something like this: I’ve got small robots. You’ve got small babies. I wonder if we can do something together.
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The two professors started building power mobility robots that let disabled children explore their surroundings with greater confidence and independence. But due to the cost and heft of the parts, their early vehicles cost tens of thousands of dollars and weighed up to 150 pounds, making them inaccessible to the families who needed them the most. Galloway’s solution to those problems came to him during a visit to Toys ‘R’ Us, where he saw he could shift his vision of “babies driving robots” to the lower tech “babies driving race cars.” It was then that Go Baby Go was born.
Unlike electric wheelchairs, which are usually reserved by kids above age three, Galloway’s cars can be used in the critical early years of development. He estimates that so far Go Baby Go has retrofitted an estimated 100 toy cars, a small dent for the more than half a million American children under the age of five who have mobility problems. To spread his mission, Galloway has traveled across the country, posted YouTube videos and spoken with dozens of parents. He hopes that others can learn from his work and build cars of their own: “If you’re not going to drop what you’re doing and come work for us, at least contact us — we’ll send you everything we have.”
MORE: #GivingTuesday: Five Takeaways From One Great Experiment in Philanthropy
This Nonprofit Needs Your Help to Get Paralyzed Veterans Walking Again
Dan Rose lost the use of his legs after his Army unit was attacked with an I.E.D. in Afghanistan in April of 2011. But now he’s getting some mobility back, thanks to a robotic suit built by Ekso Bionics and a non-profit called SoldierSocks, which paid for Rose to get the pricey technology. The battery-powered exoskeleton weighs 50 pounds, and takes a step when it senses the user’s weight shift. “Just standing up was surreal,” Rose told Martha Maccallum of Fox News. “Being eye-level with people again was an amazing experience.”
Check out the homework assignment that turned into a life-saving medical device.
According to SoldierSocks founder Christopher Meek, each suit costs $110,000 to $140,000, depending on the type of software the user requires. There are approximately 100,000 veterans in America with lower-extremity paralysis, and those who qualify for medical benefits receive about $2,700 a month, putting the Ekso suit out of reach for most of them. With that in mind, Solider Socks will be buying 10 Ekso suits for veterans. The group is seeking donations to purchase as many of them as possible for others. It’s a lot of money, but as Rose said, the suit is “life changing.”
MORE: The Surprising Way a Shower Can Save a Life
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the source of funding for 10 robotic suits for veterans. It is the non-profit Solider Socks, not Ekso Bionics, the manufacturer.
Why Has Google Started Hoarding Robots?
This year, Google has acquired eight robotics companies. One of them is Boston Dynamics, the company best known for creating “creepy galloping robots” like the Big Dog and Wild Cat for the Defense Department. Another is Bot & Dolly, which makes robotic camera systems as seen in the movie “Gravity,” starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information to make it universally accessible and useful. So, how do these robots help them fulfill their mission? They hope to equip these robots with cameras and send them all over the world as part of the Google Maps initiative. They may even become a replacement for Google Street View cars.