Stephen Hawking shows off Intel’s connected wheelchair

While Apple was announcing its latest iPhones, Intel was showing off a wheelchair. The chipset maker revealed its connected wheelchair on Tuesday, complete with endorsement from one of the world’s greatest living scientists, Dr. Stephen Hawking. The wheelchair is being created by Intel’s internet of things department, and is designed to take biometric information from the user and display it on touch screens.

The device is capable of measuring the health of the user, including body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure, in addition to the status of the wheelchair itself. It also allows people to quickly judge the wheelchair accessibility of places they visit. Hawking, whose life story will be told in the upcoming biopic The Theory of Everything, has worked with Intel engineers for more than a decade, and said the connected chair was an ideal example of how the technology for the disabled is “often a proving ground for the technology of the future.”