Award That Makes Our Faculty Member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Volkan Sezer Proud

“Turkey Accessibility Awards” organized by the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Services were given in a ceremony held at the Presidential Complex. ITU Faculty of Electrical and Electronics, Department of Control and Automation faculty member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Volkan Sezer received the “Jury’s winner” award in “Scientific Studies and Projects in the Field of Accessibility Category”.

Turkey Accessibility Awards were given in a ceremony held at the Presidential Complex. First Lady Emine Erdoğan and Minister of Family, Labour and Social Services Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk attended the "Turkey Accessibility Awards Ceremony".

Turkey Accessibility Awards were organized in 9 categories. 1075 applications were made for the awards. The winners in 9 categories were determined separately by "jury" and "public voting" methods.  ITU Department of Control and Automation faculty member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Volkan Sezer became the “Jury’s winner” in “Scientific Studies and Projects in the Field of Accessibility Category”. The award was presented to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Volkan Sezer by the First Lady Emine Erdoğan.

Our faculty member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Volkan Sezer said the following about his award-winning project: “The aim of this study is to enable people with different levels of disability to travel freely from one place to another, either fully autonomously or semi-autonomously. The user sitting on the self-driving autonomous chair will lean back after informing the chair about the place s/he wants to go to and will be delivered to the target place safely without hitting the obstacles through the designed artificial intelligence solutions. Another capability of the chair, which constantly interprets its surroundings with the sensors on it, is the semi-autonomous driving feature that allows people who are paralyzed down from the neck to manipulate the chair with head movements. The scientific studies made during the project carried out at Istanbul Technical University and supported by TÜBİTAK were shared with the scientific community as 3 international conference papers, 2 international journal articles, 1 national journal article and 1 international book chapter. The scientific studies on this topic still continue. The first prize that our project received at the Accessibility Awards made us proud and increased the inward pleasure we get when making studies that touch the lives of individuals with disabilities.”

We congratulate our faculty member and wish him continued success.