Access-H20: Sensor driven smart faucet to enable and empower independent drinking and grooming for individuals impacted by spinal cord injury - Project Summary/Abstract
New incidence of spinal cord injuries ranges from 250k to 500k globally each year, with up to 7 million people
impacted worldwide. Currently almost 300k individuals are living in the United States with SCI and approximately
60% of those are considered quadriplegic. Spinal cord injury results in life-altering consequences in terms of
morbidity, mortality, functional status, employment and quality of life. Beyond physical and mental impact on the
individual, the economic and social impacts are extreme with average lifetime cost of care for a young adult at
age 25 with high quadriplegia estimated to be $4.6 million. The range of functional impact most often depends
on the level of injury and completeness. Higher level, more complete injuries cause more widespread weakness
and paralysis. For quadriplegics with injuries at the cervical level, their ability to complete even the most basic
ADLs are severely compromised, as they may only retain head control as well as some slight shoulder control,
elbow flexion, and tenodesis grasp of objects. One of the most basic human needs is accessibility to water for
wide ranging ADLs such as drinking, grooming, or face washing. However, control and delivery form factor of
the water (On/Off, temperature, force & angle, and stream/spray type) have different requirements for unique
ADLs. Traditional faucets can be very challenging, if not impossible, for an individual with high level SCI and
limited control degrees of freedom to adjust and control for a given task requiring water.
The Access-H20 smart faucet being developed by Nasoni, LLC will solve these market challenges by smart
sensor integration, automated flow adjustment, & intuitive control algorithms to improve water accessibility for
targeted ADLs in SCI. The smart faucet design delivers water through either a traditional downward spout or
upward fountain delivery, allowing a single faucet to be used by all in a household. System design will integrate
a sensor network (proximity, voice, camera, & eye gaze sensor) which can be calibrated based on remaining
control degrees of freedom of the individual. Intelligent algorithm mapping will allow the user to activate the
faucet for use and adjust it through various flow control features such as on/off, temperature, nozzle (spray or
stream), force, and angle of water flow for a given task. For example, the faucet will automatically adjust to warm,
spray, and higher delivery angle for face washing, as opposed to cold, stream, & lower delivery angle for drinking.
While the fully commercialized Access-H2O will include all features above, this Phase I will demonstrate core
feasibility of more independent drinking and grooming in SCI. Phase I will first focus on upgrading the existing
static fountain design with a sensor and machine vision network, as well as novel electromechanical flow controls
to automatically adjust water delivery. Next, smart algorithms will be designed to map individual user control
inputs to targeted water delivery for drinking and face washing. Once the enhanced faucet and algorithms have
been integrated and technical verified through bench testing, the prototype will be deployed in a pilot usability
study with spinal cord injury subjects.
