Led by Paralympics gold medallist Jaimie Borisoff, the BEAST is entered in Cybathlon, a competition of assistive technologies to help people with disabilities
When a car accident when he was 19 left him with a severe spinal cord injury, Jaimie Borisoff saw it as a challenge, just another thing to get done, as he put it.
“I think that (a challenge to get things done) is analogous to our preparation for this race,” Borisoff said. “We have these tasks, and we have to come up with technologies and techniques and solutions to accomplish them.
“I have that memory of early life, the spinal injury, then needing a wheelchair, there was a lot of problem-solving.”
Besides being a math whiz at Queen Elizabeth Secondary in Vancouver, Borisoff was a good hockey and baseball player.
Now 54, his accident happened the summer after his first year of university. He went on to get a degree in engineering, and then a PhD in spinal cord regeneration.
This is the third Cybathlon, but it’s Borisoff’s first.
The BCIT team’s entry, the BEAST, is a powered wheelchair that can navigate uneven terrain and off-road obstacles such as uneven rocks and tree roots.
It can even tackle a flight of stairs.
“I’m excited,” he said. “I think about my wheelchair basketball career and being at the Paralympics. I love competition, and I love engineering and designing and inventing, playing in the shop and trying to do creative things with technology.
“I think this is a merger of these two areas of my life that I’ve had a lot of fun doing.”
Borisoff, a former Canada Research Chair in rehab engineering design, is director of MAKE+, BCIT’s applied-research group that focuses on improving accessibility and mobility for people with spinal cord injuries through wheeled mobility and rehab engineering design.
Borisoff is also an adjunct professor in occupational science and occupational therapy, as well as a principal investigator at ICORD, a spinal cord injury research centre at Vancouver General Hospital.
His vision is to merge existing equipment, such as today’s wheelchairs, with newer technologies such as robotics and exoskeletons.
He feels the Swiss competition is a great chance to highlight the work being done at BCIT.
“We think of the research we’re doing here, it’s probably a little bit different than the universities do,” Borisoff said. “We think of it as applied research and this competition, this whole project, is a demonstration of some of the work we do here, tackling practical things in everyday life, and working with end-users and stakeholders.
“So many disciplines come together … evaluating and testing and problem-solving, and (the BEAST) is just such a great example of that.”