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152 Modern Robotics

be driven with a joystick. It is equipped with ultrasonic sensors and
can give warnings such as “Object to the left!”
One day the cybernetics researchers had brought the wheelchair
platform to the Avenue School in Reading, a school for children with
special needs. Warwick and the researchers who built the platform
found it rather awkward to drive since it was not like the automobiles
most people are used to. The researchers were worried that the dis-
abled children would have even more trouble with the device.
They were surprised when the first disabled child who tried it out,
a boy with cerebral palsy, began zipping the chair around the room
at breakneck speed, avoiding all obstacles confidently. The incident
suggested to Warwick that disabled people may be better able to
adapt to new technology than people who have never had to rely on
assistive devices.
In the late 1990s, Warwick and his research team worked on
everything from adapting networking and mapping technology to
making it easier for disabled persons to function independently
at home. In the “Intelligent Home System,” doors, windows, and
devices such as lights, heaters, and television sets each had a control
processor linked to a central processor. The resident could then give
vocal or other commands to control all the features of the home.
Mobile robot technology could also enhance mobility for dis-
abled persons. A robot wheelchair could include an internal map
with significant locations plus the usual collision-avoidance and
path-finding software. The wheelchair user could simply say “take
me to the bathroom” or “take me to the kitchen table,” and the
chair would do the rest. A demonstration model of a “magic” robot
chair was built and appeared regularly on the British television show
Jim’ll Fix It. (Interestingly, the show’s producers requested that the
unit’s high-quality synthesized speaking voice be replaced by some-
thing that sounded more like a robot!)

The Seven Dwarfs

Warwick and his fellow researchers at the University of Reading
have developed robots with a more open-ended purpose of explor-
ing the architecture of robot intelligence. Some, like “Walter,” are