Assistive Expertise: Navigate Safely With Strutt EV1

At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, Singapore-based startup Strutt launched the EV¹, a powered private mobility system that makes use of lidar, cameras, and onboard computing for collision avoidance. Not like manually-steered powered wheelchairs, the EV¹ assists with navigation in each indoor and outside environments—stopping or rerouting itself earlier than a collision can happen.

Strutt describes its strategy as “shared management,” by which the consumer units path and velocity, whereas the system intervenes to keep away from unsafe movement.

“The issue isn’t all the time incapacity,” says Strutt cofounder and CEO Tony Hong. “Typically individuals are simply drained. They’ve restricted vitality, and mobility shouldn’t eat it.”

Constructing a mobility platform was not Hong’s unique ambition. Skilled in optics and sensor programs, he beforehand labored in aerospace and robotics. From 2016 to 2019, he led the event of lidar programs for drones at Shenzhen, China-based DJI, a number one producer of client {and professional} drones. Hong then left DJI for a place as an assistant professor at Southern College of Science and Expertise in Shenzhen—a faculty identified for its analysis in robotics, human augmentation, sensors, and rehabilitation engineering.

Nonetheless, he says, demographic developments round him proved laborious to disregard. Populations in Asia, Europe, and North America are ageing quickly. Extra individuals are residing longer, with restricted stamina, slower response instances, or steadiness challenges. So, Hong says he left academia to develop know-how that might assist folks going through mobility limitations.

Not a Wheelchair—an EV

EV¹ combines two lidar models, two cameras, 10 time-of-flight depth sensors, and 6 ultrasonic sensors. Sensor knowledge feeds into onboard computing that performs object detection and path planning.

“We’d like accuracy at a couple of centimeters,” Hong says. “In any other case, you’re hitting door frames.”

Utilizing the touchscreen interface, customers can choose a vacation spot inside the mapped setting. The onboard system calculates a protected route and guides the car at a decreased velocity of about 3 miles per hour. The rider can override the route immediately with joystick enter. The system even helps voice instructions, permitting the consumer to direct the EV1 to waypoints saved in its reminiscence.

The consumer can say, for instance, “Go to the fridge,” and it’ll chart a course to the fridge and go there, avoiding obstacles alongside the way in which.

The Strutt EV1 places each joystick controls and a lidar-view of the setting in entrance of the system’s consumer. Strutt

Driving EV¹ in handbook mode, the rider retains full management, with vibration suggestions warning of close by obstacles. In “copilot” mode, the car prevents direct collisions by stopping earlier than affect. In “copilot plus,” it will probably steer round obstacles whereas persevering with within the meant path of journey.

“We don’t name it autonomous driving,” Hong says. “The consumer is all the time accountable and may take management immediately.”

Hong says Strutt has additionally stored its customers’ digital privateness in thoughts. All notion, planning, and management computations, he says, happen onboard the system. Sensor knowledge isn’t transmitted until the consumer chooses to add logs for diagnostics. Digicam and microphone exercise is visibly indicated, and wi-fi communications are encrypted. Navigation and impediment avoidance operate with out cloud connectivity.

“We don’t consider this as a wheelchair,” Hong says. “We consider it as an on a regular basis car.”

Strutt promotes EV1’s use for each outside and indoor environments—providing high-precision sensing capabilities to navigate confined areas. Strutt

To make sure that the EV¹ may stand up to years of shuttling a consumer forwards and backwards inside their dwelling and round their neighborhood, the Strutt workforce subjected the mobility car to 2 million curler cycles—mechanical simulation testing that enables engineers to estimate how nicely the motors, bearings, suspension, and body will maintain up over time.

The EV1’s 600-watt-hour lithium iron phosphate battery gives 32 kilometers of vary—sufficient for a full day of errands, indoor navigation, and neighborhood journey. A smaller 300-watt-hour model, designed to adjust to airline lithium-battery limits, delivers 16 km. Charging from zero to 80 p.c takes two hours.

Would possibly These EVs Be Coated by Insurance coverage?

The EV1 retails for US $7,500—a worth that would place it outdoors the attain of individuals with out deep pockets. For now, superior sensors and embedded computing hold manufacturing price excessive, whereas insurance coverage reimbursement frameworks for AI-assisted mobility units rely upon the place an individual lives.

“A retail worth of $7,500 raises severe fairness issues,” says Erick Rocha, communications and growth coordinator on the Los Angeles-based advocacy group Incapacity Voices United,. “Many mobility system customers within the United States depend on Medicaid,” the federal government insurance coverage program for folks with restricted incomes. “Entry should not be restricted to those that can afford to pay out of pocket.”

Medicaid protection for high-tech mobility units varies extensively by state, and a few states have guidelines that create important boundaries to approval (particularly for non-standard or extra specialised tools).

Even in states that do cowl mobility units, comparable forms of hurdles typically present up. Virtually all states require prior approval for powered mobility units, and the method will be time-consuming and documentation-heavy. Many states rigidly outline what “medically crucial” means. They could require an in depth prescription describing the options of the mobility system and why the affected person’s wants can’t be met with an easier mobility assist corresponding to a walker, cane, or customary handbook wheelchair. Some states’ processes embrace a complete in-person examination, documenting how the impairment described by the clinician limits actions of each day residing corresponding to toileting, dressing, bathing, or consuming. Even when an individual overcomes these hurdles, a state Medicaid program may deny protection if a tool doesn’t match neatly into current Healthcare Widespread Process Coding System billing codes

“Sensor-assisted programs can enhance security,” Rocha says. “However the query is whether or not a tool actually meets the lived, day-to-day realities of individuals with restricted mobility.”

Hong says that Strutt, based in 2023, is betting that falling sensor costs and advances in embedded processing now make business deployment of the EV¹ possible.