If you’re familiar with Professor Charles Xavier of the X-Men, then you must think the current crop of wheelchairs are quite ancient and prehistoric. Professor X doesn’t have to vigorously push on tires or press anything to get his wheelchair moving. In fact, the thing floats on air as seamlessly as if it were flying. While this is the Marvel universe, you must envy the level of technology they have to be able to come up with these wondrous things for the physically disadvantaged.

You actually don’t have to look that far, as Professor X-like wheelchairs may just be flooding the market soon. A smart wheelchair is one that is designed specifically for people who can’t use the conventional mobility aids in moving a conventional wheelchair. It has an artificial, computerized control that sort of auto-pilots the wheelchair in lieu of user control, with the ultimate task of reducing the burden on the user. It has infrared sensors, sonar, or computer vision to spot obstacles and thus modify the person’s route to cope with it. These things assist in navigation and stops the user if he or she has directed the wheelchair to come face to face with an obstacle. Taking this a step further, some smart wheelchairs even have robotic arms to hold common household objects and get door handles.

Now verging on science fiction, some models of smart wheelchairs for specific people actually have the ability to interpret small muscular activations and execute them as high-level commands. Yes, mind control and artificial intelligence.

Smart wheelchairs are usually for users with cognitive impairment, like dementia, or motor disabilities, such as cerebral pulsae or paraplegia (what Professor X had).

Today, however, because of the high specialized nature of the invention, the price of smart wheelchairs can be pretty steep. So while the first batch of these nifty inventions were delivered in 2000, it is still very much uncommon today.