ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
FEATURE
Launched in early 2021, LUCI smart technology gives power wheelchairs a 360-degree view of the world to avoid collisions and warn of tipping dangers.
‘SELF-AWARE’ WHEELCHAIR
‘Invisible’ Housings
Photo credit: LUCI
On-demand injection molding, plus sheet metal fabrication, helps bring LUCI technology to market. Brothers Barry and Jered Dean didn’t set out to start a company. But nothing on the market solved their problem: Keeping Barry’s daughter, Katherine, safe in her power wheelchair. Each year, wheelchair users get hurt when their devices, which weigh hundreds of pounds, tip over or run into objects. When a family friend was sent to the hospital after a wheelchair fall, the Dean brothers – Barry, a Grammy-nominated Nashville songwriter, and Jered, a Denver-based design engineer – got to work sketching ideas out at a restaurant on a @design_eng_mag
paper tablecloth. “Obviously we chose to go ahead and go for it because it didn’t seem anybody was going to do this anytime soon,” said Jered. “We couldn’t afford for our family to wait for somebody else to do it.” What they came up with is LUCI, an attachable accessory system that brings smart technology to power wheelchairs for stability, security and connectivity. LUCI’s hardware and software combine to give power wheelchairs a 360-degree view of the world to avoid collisions and drop-offs and also warn of tipping dangers. LUCI incorporates stereo-vision cameras and
infrared, ultrasonic, and radar sensors in a patented, first-of-its-kind system that gets mounted between the seat and wheels of a power wheelchair. The Dean brothers, with Barry as CEO and Jered as CTO, founded the LUCI company in 2017 and began selling the LUCI system in early 2021. Since then, the product has earned widespread recognition, named Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2020, Popular Science’s Best of What’s New, a CES 2021 Health & Wellness Innovation Award and Mobility Management’s “Smart Technology” Product Award.
When the Deans’ announced their intent to develop LUCI, it generated intense interest from wheelchair manufacturers. For the speed and flexibility required, they turned to Protolabs for injection-molding of plastic prototypes and production parts. The company also provided prototyping of sheet metal components and, as it turned out, services they hadn’t anticipated using at the outset. “We were developing fast and we were developing with a lot of unknowns,” Jered said. “There weren’t many other options because Protolabs could turn things quickly and cost effectively so that we could keep moving forward.” As a power wheelchair user steers LUCI with a joystick or other means, onboard sensors map the surroundings to avoid anything in the way, from curbs and vehicles to pets and people. The mapping technology includes
November/December 2023 DESIGN ENGINEERING 17
