PathFynder

PathFynder is a self-driving wheelchair from UBTech's healthcare unit, shown to the world on 31 August 2022 alongside four other elderly-care machines. It is built for facilities rather than for private owners: a resident sits down, and the chair either takes joystick commands or drives itself along mapped routes through a care home, a park, an airport or a shopping mall. The chair weighs 49.5 kg and rides on two 10-inch omnidirectional front wheels and two puncture-proof rear wheels, which lets it turn on the spot in a corridor. It moves between 0.1 and 1.2 m/s and its removable lithium pack is rated for at least 15 km on a charge. Note that UBTech states range, not working hours, so a facility planning a shift cannot read runtime off the datasheet. Navigation combines hybrid positioning with real-time mapping, an RGBD camera and a nine-axis inertial sensor. The chair detects steps, curves and rough ground, warns the user by voice and brakes or slows by itself; cliff detection reacts to drops over 10 cm and the chair clears obstacles above 5 cm. Positioning accuracy is given as 0.25 m and 10 degrees, which is enough to arrive at a room but not to dock precisely. A cloud platform shows where every chair is and dispatches the nearest free one, and a QR code on the frame starts a cruise route for a visitor who has never used the machine before. What UBTech does not publish is a price, a charging time or a battery capacity in watt-hours, and the company gives no maximum user weight — an omission that matters for a mobility device.

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