Autonomous Wheelchair: From Klein's Joystick to ABB AMRs

How the autonomous wheelchair grew from Bath chairs and Klein's 1953 powered chair to WHILL's million airport rides, and what ABB's AMR navigation adds.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/2/20266 min read

An autonomous wheelchair takes its rider to a chosen place on its own, steers around people and goes back to base when the trip is over. At some airports this is already part of the daily routine. This post follows the wheelchair from Bath chairs and the folding steel frame to George Klein's powered chair of the 1950s, then to self-driving chairs in hospitals and at airports, led by WHILL. It compares their navigation with ABB's Flexley Mover robots, which map factories with cameras, and asks what stands in the way of a self-driving chair at home. Robot arms fitted to wheelchairs are a separate subject, covered in our post on the wheelchair robot arm.

Older man in a red shirt sitting in a black power wheelchair on the grass beside a park bench
Older man in a red shirt sitting in a black power wheelchair on the grass beside a park bench

A senior drives an electric wheelchair through a park in Ottawa, 2020. Photo: Cbuske46 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From Bath chairs to Klein's powered wheelchair

For most of history a wheelchair moved because someone pushed it or the rider turned the wheels by hand. In 1655 Stephan Farffler, a paraplegic watchmaker, built a self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis. From around 1760 the Bath chair, a wheeled seat usually pushed or pulled by an attendant, brought such chairs into wider use. The modern frame arrived in 1933, when the mechanical engineers Harry C. Jennings Sr. and his disabled friend Herbert Everest built the first lightweight, folding steel wheelchair. Their X-brace design is still common today. It made chairs easier to carry, yet the rider still needed strong arms or a helper.

Old photograph of a man wrapped in blankets in a wicker Bath chair in front of a wooden hut
Old photograph of a man wrapped in blankets in a wicker Bath chair in front of a wooden hut

A young man with tuberculosis sits in a Bath chair outside an open air chalet, with a woman beside him. Photo: Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Motors came after the Second World War. In 1950 Canada's Department of Veterans Affairs asked George Klein, an engineer at the National Research Council in Ottawa, to improve the motorized wheelchair for veterans with quadriplegia. Klein worked with veterans in Veterans Affairs hospitals, fitted a redesigned motor to an Everest and Jennings chair and added a joystick to steer and to drive forward and back. Separate drives on each wheel let the chair pivot sharply in tight rooms. By 1953 his electric chair was working. Klein did not patent it, and in 1955 Canada gave the prototype to the US Veterans Administration so that companies could build it.

Back of a black folding wheelchair with the Everest and Jennings logo on its seat back
Back of a black folding wheelchair with the Everest and Jennings logo on its seat back

The Everest & Jennings name on the back of a wheelchair. Klein fitted his motor and joystick to a chair from this maker. Photo: Penny Richards / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A joystick still needs a rider who can steer, and not every rider can. Research groups began adding sensors and computers to powered chairs. One of the better known projects came from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, working with MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory under Daniela Rus. In September 2016 its self-driving wheelchair found its way through the corridors of Changi General Hospital in Singapore. The chair built a map with three lidars, used a localization algorithm to work out where it was on that map, and rolled on six wheels so it could turn tightly and fit through ordinary doorways.

A man in uniform seated in a wheelchair test rig while another wheelchair user watches
A man in uniform seated in a wheelchair test rig while another wheelchair user watches

Admiral Mike Mullen tries a robotic wheelchair prototype at a wheelchair research center in Pittsburgh, April 2010. Photo: U.S. Department of Defense via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Self-driving chairs at Haneda, Changi and a million rides

Airports turned the idea into a service. WHILL, founded in 2012, tested its autonomous chairs from 2019 at airports including Dallas Fort Worth, New York JFK, Abu Dhabi and Winnipeg. On 8 June 2020 Tokyo's Haneda Airport became the first to use them in daily operation. Passengers sit down at a station near security, the chair drives them to their gate using its sensors and a map recorded in advance, and then it returns to base by itself. On 29 September 2026 WHILL said the service had passed one million autonomous rides at 28 locations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, with more than 200 devices and no injury claims.

Three black self-driving wheelchairs lined up under an Autonomous Service sign in an airport hall
Three black self-driving wheelchairs lined up under an Autonomous Service sign in an airport hall

WHILL autonomous chairs waiting at their station at Haneda Airport, Tokyo. Photo: Hanabishi / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Pushing wheelchairs on the long walks between gates takes a lot of airport staff, and these chairs take over part of that work. On 31 August 2026 WHILL said up to 18 of its chairs would be added step by step in the transit areas of Terminals 2 and 3 at Singapore's Changi Airport, after a trial with 10 units that began in March 2025. Staff send the chairs out remotely according to flight schedules, and the chairs carry passengers from arrival gates to a service lounge and on to their next gate. Haneda's fleet grew to 37 units in August with the new North Satellite terminal. WHILL lists auto-braking, collision avoidance, stair detection and remote supervision with human override among its safety layers.

Rows of blue Southwest Airlines wheelchairs parked together in an airport terminal
Rows of blue Southwest Airlines wheelchairs parked together in an airport terminal

Manual wheelchairs parked for passengers at Terminal 4 of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, 2021. Photo: Xnatedawgx / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make wheelchairs, but its Flexley Mover robots face a similar problem in factories: getting from one point to another among people, without tracks or floor tape. In 2025 ABB gave the Flexley Mover P604 3D Visual SLAM, which builds a map from camera images. ABB says the robot positions itself to within 10 mm, that each robot makes its own map and shares it with the rest of the fleet, and that no extra infrastructure is needed. Routes and tasks are set up in ABB's AMR Studio software. A wheelchair must meet medical rules that a factory robot does not, but the navigation problem is much the same: build a map, know where you are on it and plan a path around people.

Low white ABB mobile robot with a grey top driving between stacks of wooden pallets
Low white ABB mobile robot with a grey top driving between stacks of wooden pallets

An ABB Flexley Mover P604 among wooden pallets; it finds its way with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

Where the autonomous wheelchair goes next

Hospitals look like the next big setting. SMART said its 2016 chair was meant to free nurses from logistics work, such as hunting for wheelchairs and wheeling patients around a large hospital. Some hospitals already run delivery robots, as our post on hospital delivery logistics describes, and ABB has shown a mobile YuMi concept, a dual-arm robot on a wheeled base, for hospital labs. In time one building map could be shared by delivery robots, lab robots and patient chairs. In factories, a self-driving chair for a worker with limited mobility could use the same map as the AMR fleet. That is a possibility, and we know of no ABB project doing it.

Two armed ABB YuMi robot on a white wheeled base standing in a bright lab corridor
Two armed ABB YuMi robot on a white wheeled base standing in a bright lab corridor

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

Homes are harder. They have narrow doors, rugs, thresholds and furniture that moves, and nobody is watching remotely in case something goes wrong. A home chair would need the same safety layers WHILL uses at airports, such as collision avoidance and stair detection, in a far less predictable space. Lidar and camera SLAM already map small flats for robot vacuums, so the tricky part is moving a person smoothly through tight spaces. Omni wheels, like those on a small vehicle WHILL demonstrated at the Japan Mobility Show in 2025, let a base slide sideways, which helps in a cramped hallway or beside a bed.

Black octagonal robot base on four omni wheels on a grey exhibition carpet
Black octagonal robot base on four omni wheels on a grey exhibition carpet

A small omni wheel vehicle that WHILL demonstrated by remote control at the Japan Mobility Show 2025 in Tokyo. Photo: RuinDig/Yuki Uchida / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Price is the first hurdle for home use. WHILL's model works because an airport buys a fleet, keeps it charged and supervises it remotely, which spreads the cost over many rides, while a private buyer pays for one chair alone. Safety is the second. A self-driving chair carries someone who may not be able to brace or step away, so it has to stop gently and keep well clear of stair edges, and the rider needs a simple way to take over at any moment. Industrial robots already deal with people nearby: ABB's GoFa cobot limits its force and speed, and factory AMR fleets share maps across many robots every day.

A woman guiding the arm of an ABB GoFa collaborative robot by hand at a table
A woman guiding the arm of an ABB GoFa collaborative robot by hand at a table

ABB's GoFa cobot is guided by hand and stops when it senses contact. Photo: ABB

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