Autonomous Toileting System

Have you ever been lying in bed, mostly asleep, but you really have to go to the toilet. Your spouse gets up and is heading to the toilet, so you say, “Please go for me too.” J

The Autonomous Toileting System won’t go quite that far, but it should be a major help to people who are wheelchair bound.

If you have ever been confined to a wheelchair, you know how frustrating and embarrassing it is to need help to use the toilet. Autonomous Vehicles can help here.

First, the Autonomous Toileting System can maneuver you onto the toilet. That shouldn’t surprise you given what I’ve been saying about Personal Mobility Vehicles.

The Autonomous Toileting System needs to back into a bathroom, maneuver to the toilet, and back over the toilet. Here is a “time-lapse view” of the Autonomous Toileting System maneuvering a person into a small bathroom and over the toilet. This may involve opening doors, raising or lowering toilet lids and seats, and flushing the toilet, because the person may not be able to do those.

These functions pose some interesting constraints on the design and construction of the Autonomous Toileting System: the system needs to recognize where it needs to go; the whole system needs to fit through doors and maneuver in small spaces; the back and bottom of the system need to fit over the toilet.

Second, the Autonomous Toileting System needs to allow the person direct access to the toilet: the center of the seat in the Autonomous Toileting System needs to either be open all the time, or open and close without dislodging the person or causing them discomfort (I see several mechanisms to do this, but I won’t go into the details here).

The person’s clothing needs to “open” – hospital gowns are designed for this, but I believe more modest, and fashionable, clothing will be developed.

There are many products to assist people with varying levels of self-cleaning ability. Some toilets provide automatic cleaning using a bidet (although this one is a bit over the top J). If an appropriate mechanism isn’t already installed in the toilet, the Autonomous Toileting System will need to provide those facilities; note this doesn’t need to be built into the Autonomous Toileting System itself, but can be delivered separately, another advantage of Autonomous Vehicles.

The Autonomous Toileting System is easily cleaned, most likely automatically – if it isn't built in, an Autonomous Vehicle can take it to the cleaning station or vice versa.

A likely design is that the seat, or more generally the Content Carrier, is separate from the Mobility Platform. Because the Autonomous Toileting System needs to have the bottom open, it probably isn’t suitable for all your Personal Mobility needs, for example racing off to dinner may need more power. J Also the limited seat size may not be comfortable enough for long stretches.

How do you transfer from one seat to another? There are various mechanisms depending on your personal needs: perhaps you can just lean forward on a supporting bar, and the seats change out from behind you. Of if you need more support, a harness can support you under the arms to lift you while the seats change. Because we are quickly exchanging seats behind you, complex lifts are only needed for other types of transfer, such as to or from bed, or for people with severe mobility challenges. This should make life more self-determined, more affordable, and more pleasant.

The Mobility Platforms can change out from under the seats so that you hardly even notice.

You choose the seat most appropriate for each activity, whether it is reclining for a snooze, sitting up for dinner, or secured for travel. If you are going to be stationary for a while, you don’t need a Mobility Platform at all. You choose the Mobility Platform depending on whether you are moving around your rooms, going up stairs, using the toilet, tooling off to the dining room, or drag racing in the halls.

Because you only use the various Mobility Platforms a small portion of each day, you can share them. The appropriate one autonomously appears when you need it. This greatly reduces the cost, and makes good use of the 4-Dimensional Map for scheduling. Similarly, you can share seats, and a Mobility Platform will bring you the right one when you need it.