Learning to Explore and Exploring to Learn: Understanding Powered Mobility Use in Toddlers with Disabilities

For toddlers with disabilities, powered mobility technology can be a powerful tool to facilitate self-initiated exploration and social engagement in home, community, and clinical environments. However, despite overwhelming evidence that access to independent mobility is critical for early development, access to powered mobility for toddlers with disabilities is significantly limited. New devices, such as the Permobil Explorer Mini, have recently made it easier and safer to provide powered mobility options for young children with disabilities at appropriate developmental stages. Yet, many open questions remain surrounding how toddlers learn to use these devices, how powered mobility can support development, and how we should design powered mobility interventions. Our transdisciplinary team of engineers, clinician scientists, and rehabilitation professionals has investigated how toddlers with disabilities use powered mobility for self-directed play and rehabilitation across a spectrum of environments: in the lab, at home, and in the clinic. We will discuss quantitative and qualitative results from our recent Explorer Mini experiments with over 35 children with diverse developmental disabilities, including device use patterns, developmental outcomes, and the perceptions of caregivers and rehabilitation professionals. We found that after 16 weeks of using powered mobility at home, there were significant improvements in the Bayley IV across all domains. In the lab, we demonstrated that on average, kids move a distance of 52 meters in a 15-minute play session. These results support our long-term goal of building the scientific foundation needed to foster the translation of clinically impactful mobility technologies for infants and toddlers with disabilities.