Risk Assessment Report: Eye-Controlled Electric Wheelchair System

This report presents a comprehensive risk assessment of an eye-controlled electric wheelchair, analyzing potential hazards throughout the product lifecycle. The introduction highlights the innovative nature of the technology and its benefits for individuals with physical disabilities. The report then delves into the role of risk assessment, emphasizing the importance of identifying and mitigating risks related to factory worker safety, chemical exposure, environmental pollution, and the needs of handicapped users. The assessment includes tools like workplace and client profiles, pollution detection methods, and pre-launch testing to ensure safety. Stakeholders, including users, manufacturers, donors, workers, and the community, are identified, and a risk communication strategy is proposed to address their concerns. The report concludes by stressing the significance of proactive risk management in ensuring the success and safety of the eye-controlled electric wheelchair project, referencing relevant literature throughout.

Running head: EYE CONTROLLED ELECTRIC WHEEL CHAIR
Eye Controlled Electric Wheel Chair
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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EYE CONTROLLED ELECTRIC WHEEL CHAIR
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Eye Controlled Electric Wheel Chair..............................................................................................2
Role of Risk Assessments................................................................................................................3
Workers at factory and cleaning chemicals.................................................................................3
Management of Ecosystem and Handicapped persons................................................................4
Concern about Pollution of the Factory.......................................................................................4
Tools for the Risk Assessment....................................................................................................5
Stakeholders.....................................................................................................................................6
Risk Communication Strategy to the Identified Stakeholders.........................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References:....................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
The aim of this report is to discuss the importance of risk assessment planning in a
project. This report emphasis on the risk related to the application of eye controlled wheel chair
into the community and the role of risk assessment to the threats and issues that could arise in
this implication. Adoption of this latest technology over the traditional wheel chair or electrical
wheelchair could result the physically handicapped individuals to move to different places with
just the movement of eyes. It is the most innovative technology, which is almost unknown to
various sectors but have many applications (Lai et al. 2013). This will eliminate the reliability of
the patients over a trainer or carer and live his or her life independently. This innovative
implication has greater positive aspects but the production and application of this technology
could arise several threats and risks for the stakeholders that are involved in this project. Risk
assessment is very necessary for these threats and risks as explained in this report.
Eye Controlled Electric Wheel Chair
Plesnick, Repice and Loughnane (2014) presented an article on the successfully
developed eye controlled electric wheel chair. Controlling wheelchair through the use of an eye
tracker can be possible and how it can be achieved is demonstrated in their paper. The presented
design of the wheelchair is helpful in gaining control of the wheelchair through using lots of
hardware and software components in order to create an effective system. The components of the
system include a laptop, an eye tracker, a DAQ, a web cam, an inverter, and lastly an electric
wheelchair, which are the comprised hardware for the system. Software that are included in this
system are C++ scripts and LabVIEW programs, which are used to interact with eye tracker and
DAQ, and processing the data (Nguyen and Jo 2012). The eye controlled electric wheelchair is

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EYE CONTROLLED ELECTRIC WHEEL CHAIR
an innovative successful experiment that allows an user to access the control over the wheelchair
by just moving eyes or through eye movements only and could be very helpful for the
individuals who are physically disabled and help them to freely roam at places they want.
Implementing this system into the real world can lead to several risks to the stakeholders related
to this system.
Role of Risk Assessments
A risk can be referred as “the possibility of something happening”. In this case the term
‘risk’ can be referred as the possibility of negative outcome that might occur while, moving on
the discovered chair or the injury that may be caused to the environment and the individual using
this chair (Lim et al. 2013). The role of risk assessment will help in minimizing or completely
eliminating following issues:
Workers at factory and cleaning chemicals
Workers at the factory or industry, where this chairs could be created may lead to certain
threats and risks to the workers that are being employed there because of the chemicals that will
be used for the production. Exposure standards of these chemicals represent the concentration of
a mixture or a particular substance, which should not be exceeded to the environment of the
industry. Basically, there are three types of the exposure standard, which can be listed as, firstly
‘8-hour time-weighted’, secondly, ‘average peak limitation’ and ‘short term exposure limit’.
Exposure standard do not represent a fine line between the healthy and an unhealthy environment
of work (Dixon 2015). The database of Hazardous Substances Information System (HSIS)
contains guidance and additional information for many of the substances.

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Management of Ecosystem and Handicapped persons
Ecosystem management aims at restoring natural resources and conserving the major
ecological services while meeting the cultural, political and socioeconomic needs of the current
generation as well as for the future generation. Major objectives of the ecosystem can be referred
as the ethical use and efficient management of the natural resources (Simplican et al. 2015).
Approaches can be made in order to achieve effective ecosystem management by engaging
conservation efforts at both the landscape level or local and involves different managements,
which can be listed as, natural resource management, adaptive management, command and
control management, and strategic management.
Concern about Pollution of the Factory
Risk assessment can play a vital role in managing the pollution produced by the industry.
The risk assessment will help in monitoring the level of the pollution that the industry is
exposing to the environment and how to decompose the waste produced during the production
will also be involved in this assessment system (Ongunkunle and Fatoba 2013).

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Workplace risk
Control
Client Risk
Assessment
Client ready to
move
Environmental Risk
Assessment
Task risk
Assessment
Trainer Risk
Assessment
EYE CONTROLLED ELECTRIC WHEEL CHAIR
Figure 1: Risk assessment for the person using wheelchair
(Source: Created by author)
Tools for the Risk Assessment
Developing a workplace profile:
It includes both object-handling and people-handling during the practice of this
wheelchair. The workplace profile can be helpful in controlling in order to maximize the safety
of the staff and client at the workplace. Legal responsibilities can be fulfilled by using risk
control plan and workplace profile and risk (Thomas et al. 2013). This should include workplace
details and the risk assessment for the workplace. Risks that need to be considered are the
equipments, staffs, environment and incident reporting.
The Client Profile:

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The capabilities and the action plan can be introduced in the summarize details of the
client in order to create profile of the client. Client factors and characteristics that might affect
the automatic movement of the individual, which should also be included in the client profile. It
will provide information that are needed to make decisions about the equipments and techniques
required, including other controls that could affect the client moving and handling.
Pollution detection:
Pollution detection will lead concerns toward protecting the economy and the nature and
will also protect the industry from legal actions that might affect the organization. This will
include detection of the amount of waste generated, chemical exposing in the work environment
and into the external environment (Kavlock et al. 2012). Proper disposal of the wastes and other
harmful gases using latest technologies could help the organization to get away with the legal
allegations.
Pre-launching risk assessment:
Before launching the product there should be pre-testing done for each of the
product in order to check if there is any fault or something is not working. It could help
both the client and the organization in being safe and saving reputation respectively.
Stakeholders
The stakeholders for this case can be listed as: User or clients that are using chair,
Organization that is producing this product, donors who are funding the organization, workers
that are getting employed in the industry for the production, economy where the industry is going
to be established (common people) and the contractors for the raw materials and the distributors

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(Kenney et al. 2015). User can be considered as the highly concerned stakeholder in this case as
the product will be utilized by only those users who are physically handicapped with legs and
cannot move to other places. There are several risks for the user using eye tracker technology for
movement. Technology cannot be completely reliable because of the defects (either manufacture
defect or any software glitch) may cause vulnerability in the working of the electric chair (Kuo et
al. 2013). The organization may face reputation issue if the product is launched without testing
and caused problems to the users. Workers that are working may face medical problems due to
the chemical used in the factory. Pollution releasing to the environment due to the waste
generated and expose of toxic gases.
Risk Communication Strategy to the Identified Stakeholders
Best selection strategy can be done by following two steps which are Assessing the risk
and second Gauging the risk perception of affected individuals. Stakeholder relation can be
considered as small hazard and Emotional response of affected or at -risk population’s apathy
(Lundgern and McMakin 2013).
Choosing risk communication can be considered by the following figure:

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Outrage Management
Stake Holder
Relation
Precaution
Advocacy
Crisis Management
Small HazardBig
Outrage Fear
Apathy
EYE CONTROLLED ELECTRIC WHEEL CHAIR
Figure 2: Appropriate communication strategy
(Source: created by author)
Risk communication strategy can be spread among holders separately by using various
latest means of communication such as, social media, blogs, newspaper and magazines (Fearn-
Banks 2016). Most of the population should be covered for the communication and these are the
possible mediums through which the invention of this innovative technology can be explored
among the population. Personal website can be the solution for this as it would be helpful in
knowing the intention of the users and demand related to the eye-tracker electric wheelchair.
Community can also be informed about this by offline medium of communication, such as
awareness program and training programs publicly could help in covering local communities and
informing them about this technology.

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Conclusion
Based on the above report it can be concluded that risk assessment is a proper technique
that should be considered in every organization in order to make the project successful. Every
stakeholder’s issues should be considered while managing the risk assessment in a project in
order to eliminate or minimize to the extent level the identified threats and risks. Role of risk
assessment has been explained in the above report that will help an individual understanding the
importance of risk assessment in a project. This report covers many areas that might be affected
by the implication of eye-tracking electric wheelchair.

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Dixon, W.C., 2015. OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION METHODS.
In Workshop on Asbestos: Definitions and Measurement Methods (p. 431).
Fearn-Banks, K., 2016. Crisis communications: A casebook approach. Routledge.
Kavlock, R., Chandler, K., Houck, K., Hunter, S., Judson, R., Kleinstreuer, N., Knudsen, T., Martin, M.,
Padilla, S., Reif, D. and Richard, A., 2012. Update on EPA’s ToxCast program: providing high
throughput decision support tools for chemical risk management. Chemical research in toxicology, 25(7),
pp.1287-1302.
Kenney, K., Huan, A., Harrington, K. and Sungkar, M., 2015. DESIGN OF AHands-FREE CONTROL
SYSTEM FOR DEVICE MANIPULATION.
Kuo, W., Chien, W.T.K. and Kim, T., 2013. Reliability, yield, and stress burn-in: a unified approach for
microelectronics systems manufacturing & software development. Springer Science & Business Media.
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M., Anderson, H.R., Andrews, K.G. and Aryee, M., 2013. A comparative risk assessment of burden of
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systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. The lancet, 380(9859), pp.2224-2260.
Lundgren, R.E. and McMakin, A.H., 2013. Risk communication: A handbook for communicating
environmental, safety, and health risks. John Wiley & Sons.

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Nguyen, Q.X. and Jo, S., 2012. Electric wheelchair control using head pose free eye-gaze
tracker. Electronics Letters, 48(13), pp.750-752.
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