Medical Device Daily National Editor

"We're trying to create brats," says Cole Galloway.

Whooops – what ... brats?

Yes, definitely, says Galloway, a professor of physical therapy at the University of Delaware (UD; Newark), and hugely excited about the possibility of providing normal developmental progress, both physically and mentally, to children as young as 6 or 7 months, who are usually immobile until 3, 4 or 5 years old.

Galloway and UD mechanical engineering professor Sunil Agrawal, in collaboration with power wheelchair company Permobil (Lebanon, Tennessee), have developed kid-sized powered wheelchairs that a child as young as 6-months can drive and guide with a basic joystick.

Galloway told Medical Device Daily that the chairs offer possibilities for fundamentally changing the lives of mobility-challenged children who normally aren't provided a wheelchair, and the resultant independent movement, until they are 3, 4 or 5.

Giving the power to explore the world like average kids, the chairs will provide independence for youngsters with movement disabilities such as spina bifida and cerebral palsy – and significant improvement in quality of life for them and their families, Galloway believes – expressing that belief with vocal passion.

The work began with the development by Galloway and Agrawal of a little robotic car, dubbed UD1, which a young child quickly and easily learned to motor about.

They have now transitioned that technology to the small wheelchairs, joystick-guided, that enable mobility-challenged kids as early as 6 months old to explore the world.

Noting the significant connection between movement and mental development, Galloway says that independent mobility is necessary for physical development and enhances mental development as well. And it could mean large savings for families and the healthcare sector as a whole.

It changes the world, he says, for kids that don't get their "big boy" or "big girl" wheelchairs until at least 3 years old or later. It supports them through the normal stages of child development, even the necessary "terrible twos," especially important when children's brains and bodies are developing rapidly, he says.

But 6-month-olds? Learning to drive a wheelchair?

Galloway acknowledges that he was skeptical at first – "No, babies and robots don't go together," was his first thought, he told MDD. But then he saw kids in this age group pilot the robots developed by Agrawal, providing his mechanical engineering expertise.

"Then I thought, holy mackerel, if these kids can interact with a joystick, we can train special needs kids in the first year. The dynamic changes socially, when you actually get to go onto the playground and play with your peers."

He said he saw these young children start playing with the joystick, begin manipulating it and then scooting on the robot here and there.

"Just 6 months old, they'd look down at the joystick, they're very focused on it. And as they get trained, the head goes up, they start pointing, grunting, squealing, wanting toys in the distance, without even looking at the stick again."

And he emphasizes the connection between mobility and cognitive development.

Mobility is fundamentally different for the brain than when being "carried around passively," he says. "As soon as you move yourself, the flow, the motion of the environment and the motion of the body is now linked."

The robots have safety features such as obstacle avoidance and a "virtual leash."

These can be transferred to the chairs, but this is only a transitional step. The best child development is the normal, independent movement, socialized by the parent's voice and the natural risks and opportunities of the child's environment, Galloway says.

And the particular features on a chair can be matched to the child's particular limits and abilities.

Best of all, he says that the technologies incorporated in the chair are robust and already available. "This is not rocket science, not cutting-edge bench science, it's steady-state."

The chairs are worthy of Popular Mechanics cover-story status, but are also "Mom-worthy," he says, easily fitting into the "trunk of your Honda Civic."

"This is a device that has to be ready to go into the messy, dirty world of families," and he adds that this type of rugged testing has been done at the university's early learning center.

Because transitional to regular wheelchairs, the joystick-guided chairs can be rented, but, in any case, ought to show huge savings in a cost-benefit analysis for insurers, Galloway believes.

The technology will get a look-see by physical therapists at this week's meeting of the American Physical Therapy Association (Arlington, Virginia) in Las Vegas. Andrew, an 18-month-old with spina bifida, will be showing off his skill at piloting the chair.

Andrew started by driving the UD1 robot more than a year ago, and he now uses his chair to go just about anywhere. Galloway reports that Andrew will attend pre-K next year, impressive progress for a child with his disability.

He notes that the chairs also can be used to record movement, provide down-loadable data, with the chairs offering a research asset for studying developmentally impaired kids.

"I can use this as a tool to study development language.... Kids with cognitive impairment are born with brains, and now they have a secondary insult, called immobility. If you could reduce the component of immobility, you don't know what kids, typically thought retarded, might be able to do to leapfrog that impairment. This becomes therapeutic."

UD has filed patents for the chairs and is working with the researchers to advance them to commercialization. And Galloway hopes the chairs can start moving into Delaware in 18 months.

He sees the Las Vegas meeting as a way of pulling together the necessary enthusiasm from partner advocates and funding sources, building on the excitement he has already gotten from parents, with their calls of enquires and suggestions.

"Parents feel this ticking clock," Galloway says. "Every year we hem and haw, and wait around for the best time [to act] economically. Kids, every day, every week, every month, are sitting in the corner."

But now, he says, "This is something – this design – that really grabs people. It changes the dialogue. And what else could we have done with these kids in the first five years that we didn't even realize was possible?"