Any Reviews of the WeWalk Smart Cane?

By Falco, 9 May, 2019

Forum
Assistive Technology

Hello,

I read that the WeWalk smartcane:
https://wewalk.io/
is shipped to the Indiegogo backers.

Is there someone on this forum who already received the cane and can give a review/preview of the product?

Regards

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Comments

By sockhopsinger on Thursday, May 23, 2019 - 12:52

Good question. Hopefully a reviewer can answer that.

By alex wallis on Thursday, May 23, 2019 - 12:52

I haven't come across any reviews at all online, and I must say it does sound like its trying to be two complicated with all that it can do. if you google for wewalk smart cane you will actually find its website as one of the first results on google. I watched the presentation video on it, and it did seem a bit poor to me, they had an obviously American native English speaker doing the narration giving basically the same blurb off the company website but with several obvious mistakes in the English, I mean OK maybe this guy wasn't directly involved with the project and was just hired to do the voice over, but either he or whoever checked the script should have spotted the mistakes. the video also did feature some supposed users saying how amazing the cane was,but not actually demonstrating it. the site does appear to offer the cane for sale though. having said that I read about other canes that use light to detect obstacles and then vibrate, and given that light travels faster than sound I wonder if these are more efficient than the sonar based systems. but all in all its not something I will be hurrying to go out and purchase, I don't feel I need all the connectivity which is I suspect what your mostly paying for, and really hopefully most people have good cane skills. to be honest if people are rushing around so fast that they either hurt themselves or fall over then its kind of there own fault, far better to be slow and steady when navigating in my view.

By alex wallis on Thursday, May 23, 2019 - 12:52

yes I agree, think several people said all that to them back when they popped up on applevis last year then disappeared. I doubt it will be a viable product some how, obstacle detection nice in theory but I just wouldn't need or want all the whistles which probably really bump up the price and weight and bulk of the equipment and eat into battery life. given that I have scene no buzz about it online its fairly obvious there isn't much demand for it. the market tends to be good at weeding out these sorts of products.

By sockhopsinger on Thursday, May 23, 2019 - 12:52

It sounds nice, but I don't think I would get it for all of the reasons listed above. Besides, it is therapeutic to thwack ankles from time to time with a real cane, and I would not want to risk breakage on something so expensive. I am also concerned that I would spend so much time trying to absorb feedback from the cane that I would forget that the best thing to do is always pay attention to your surroundings, especially with those damned scooters that are popping up everywhere like unwanted cancer cells.