RHU mechatronics engineering students won the best Master's/Bachelor's Best Paper Award for their paper entitled "Smart Autonomous Wheelchair" at the BioSMART 2019 in Paris: 3rd IEEE International Conference on Bio-Engineering for Smart Technologies in Paris. The team's submission was one among many submitted by local and international universities from America, Middle East and Africa. The RHU team included the students Afif Swaidan and Jana Marzouk and their instructors Dr. Mohammad Diab, Dr. Maher El Sabbah, Dr. Rami El Khatib, and Mr. Samir Berjawi.
While the wheelchair's ultimate goal is to autonomously transfer patients through a hospital without the need for any human interference, it is also equipped with all the biological vital medical sensors such as heart rate and blood oxygen percentage monitoring. Moreover, two cutting-edge technologies, SLAM and Aruco Tags Detection and Tracking through Image Processing, were integrated in the project, which ensured high robustness and performance during operation.
This project gives patients and handicapped individuals the ability to move independently and safely through the hospital and frees the nurses to attend to more important duties and urgent cases.
Supported by IEEE organizations, Web of Science and many International academic institutions, the main objectives of BioSMART consist of communicating and promoting advanced researches, multidisciplinary techniques, methodologies and approaches as well as collaborative projects in Bio-Engineering applications such as Biomedical engineering, Biometrics, Bionics, etc. It also aims to feature the applications that best connect Bio-engineering to Smart technologies