A team of young Tunisian women engineers has developed an intelligent wheelchair system that has advanced to the finals for a prestigious European Inventors’ prize.
The project, Moovobrain, is designed to enable wheelchair users to navigate using a touchpad, voice commands, facial gestures, and a headset that detects their brain signals. This accomplishment is particularly significant as it sets an encouraging precedent in a country facing multiple challenges.
According to The Arab News Website the following achievement is noteworthy: the entry has progressed to the final stage of the Young Inventors Prize, a competition initiated by the European Patent Office in 2021, after being shortlisted from a pool of over 550 applicants.
This year’s edition is historic as it marks the first occasion on which a team from Tunisia and the Arab region has advanced to the concluding phase of this international competition, as per the announcement made by the EPO.
On July 9 in Malta, a team consisting entirely of women will vie for the top prize against two other finalists from the Netherlands and Ukraine. The Moovobrain app was initially conceptualized by co-founder Souleima Ben Temime, 28, whose motivation stemmed from her uncle’s paralysis and subsequent reliance on a wheelchair for mobility. “There was a palpable and immediate need in front of me,” she explained to AFP.
The team of four innovators initiated the development of the Moovobrain prototype in 2017 during their time at the Higher Institute of Medical Sciences in Tunis. Subsequently, they established the health-tech start-up Gewinner two years later. Despite the challenging economic and political climate in Tunisia, which has driven many Tunisians to undertake risky journeys to Europe in search of better opportunities, the team has achieved international success with their digital health technologies.
