Rory Cooper is the wizard of wheelchairs.
And that's just the start. Whether he's standing in line by day or tossing in bed at night, the bioengineer's mind is whirring on ways to make life better for those who get around in wheelchairs or are in need of other devices to make their lives more full.
"I've never stopped tinkering," Cooper said. "You could find me most weekends, if I'm not traveling somewhere, either in my garage or my basement."
The result has been a slew of inventions, including 29 patents with nine more pending.
Draw Like Minds Together
Besides his individual inventions, Cooper said his proudest achievement was creating an organization to draw other bright minds similarly inspired to find creative ways to help others. He founded the Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL) at the University of Pittsburgh in 1994, a joint Veterans Administration and university research facility.
For the VA, he's a senior career scientist. For Pitt, he's a distinguished professor.
Over his 65 years, his long list of accomplishments range from winning a bronze medal in the 1988 Seoul Paralympic Games to being awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Joe Biden in 2023. Cooper's athletic image even graced the front of Cheerios cereal boxes.
It's no wonder the National Inventors Hall of Fame inducted him.
Persist And Solve Problems
"Rory Cooper demonstrates the power of invention through his persistence and problem solving," said Rini Paiva, the hall's executive director for selection and recognition. "Informed by his own personal experiences, he has developed significant wheelchair innovations."
Yet his life pursuit arose from tragedy. While serving in the U.S. Army at age 20, a bus struck him while he rode a bicycle in Germany. A spinal cord injury paralyzed him. Ever since, he's been a wheelchair user himself.
A runner in high school and the Army before the accident, Cooper wasn't ready to let being a paraplegic keep him from his passion for racing while attending California State Polytechnic University.
It didn't take long in rehabilitation to realize how to improve wheelchairs. They were heavy, as much as 80 pounds. Wheelchairs were hard to push and forced users to bend their wrists and arms unnaturally, making them vulnerable to carpel tunnel injuries and rotator cuff tears.
At the time, paraplegic athletes often just modified their regular chairs to race. Seeing the shortcomings of that approach, Cooper set out to create a purpose-built chair just for racing.
Challenge Yourself Like Rory Cooper
"Can I make it lighter? Can I make it faster? Stiffer?" he asked himself.
He experimented with making chairs lighter through the use of advanced materials like carbon fiber and Kevlar. Then there was the need to deal with the awkward hand positions on the pushrim. One his most popular inventions to this day was modifying the grip on the rims to adapt to the more natural grip of the hand and thumb, making the wheelchair easier and safer to push.
But he didn't stop there. He also invented the SmartWheel, a biometric device used by physical therapists. It temporarily replaces the hub of the wheelchair to measure a user's push force, how often they push, the length of the push and its smoothness — aimed at getting just the right fit.
Think Differently
Tall and thin, Cooper discovered that a lower seating position made pushing easier but led to a new problem: "I realized if you sit lower, the wheels start to burn your armpits. That's not a way to shave your armpits. You get a little bloody in the process," he quipped.
The solution was to create fenders, which drew some snickers at first, but "now everybody uses them," he said.
As a graduate student at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Cooper's racing experiences led to some revelations. One was that wheelchair racers like himself push themselves hundreds of miles a week and don't experience many of the injuries that plague everyday users. "It dawned on me: We need to find out what they're doing and translate that."
At the same time, he realized that wheelchairs, used by people of all sizes, have a lot in common with shoes: They need to fit.
"We should make chairs for people, not people for chairs," he recalled.
Cooper: Understand Individual Needs
Those realizations led Cooper to switch his emphasis from designing racing wheelchairs to improving all of them — taking what he learned from competition and translating that to everyday wheelchairs.
That meant designing custom seat cushions, back rests and ergonomically correct push rims that would work for everyday users. He didn't stop there. He started to work on power wheelchairs and robotics as well.
Cooper invented a battery-powered wheelchair that can climb curbs or stairs. He developed a technology to keep a wheelchair level on an uneven road surface.
So that disabled kids can play at water parks like all their friends, he conjured up a wheelchair powered by compressed air. It has been in use at Morgan's Inspiration Island, which bills itself as an "ultra-accessible splash park" in San Antonio, Texas.
He also has worked to improve electric wheelchair controls. In particular, he developed the algorithms to make it so a joystick — what people nudge to make the chair drive in a particular direction — can be programmed to suit an individual's needs. It means fewer wrong turns or jerky wheelchair motions.
Put Others First
Many of Cooper's ideas he simply gave away for use by any company without patent applications that wanted to use them. He has no regrets to this day. "I am more interested in helping people," Cooper said. He didn't start filing patents until he was encouraged to do so by the universities where he has taught and conducted research.
He never stops inventing. His latest patent this year was for a more efficient pedal for hands on cycles that are powered by arms instead of legs.
Cooper said he always has a long list of possible projects in front of him. He decides which one to choose by looking at those that will have either a modest impact on a large number of people or a huge impact on a relatively few.
Just as some pharmaceutical makers have developed so-called "orphan drugs" that can be lifesavers to the very few desperate for them, Cooper takes on the challenge of "orphan technology."
Find Inspiration Like Cooper
One instance involved a military veteran who wanted to return to his civilian work in computer science despite multiple limb amputations. Over lunch one day, Cooper said he was asked, "Could you invent a mouse for me?"
After talking the problem over with his team, Cooper decided the answer was not a single mouse, but six. One mouse was for people using prosthetic arm hooks on the right side and one for the left. Another had bigger buttons and a sticky top surface so hooks won't slide over the surface. Other mice had different sizes to match the small, medium and large hooks.
Only about 600 veterans would conceivably benefit from the devices. And given the low cost of a computer mouse for the general public, "nobody's going to make a business out of that," he said.
Cooper's own team took on the manufacturing challenge itself and now makes the mice for the VA directly out of the HERL lab at Pitt.
Don't Waste Time
To make room for the time needed to solve those kinds of problems, Cooper tries to make best use of every moment.
He starts conjuring from the moment he wakes up at 6:30 a.m. every day. "I don't like to just waste my time," he said. So many of those problems are clicking through his head that his wife will sometimes just look at him and say, "What are you working on?"
Cooper said he never knows when inspiration will strike — "driving, bathing, sleeping, talking to colleagues or friends," to name a few.
Take Notes Like Cooper
So he is prepared. He keeps a compact lab notebook in his pocket during the day and has another next to his bed for middle-of-the-night moments. And he is known by his colleagues for keeping a blizzard of sticky notes and other scraps of paper filled with reminders pinned to his desk and elsewhere.
"It's my way of keeping myself on track," he said.
Another way of staying on track is his constant interactions with fellow researchers at HERL. It has about 50 staffers now, increasing to about 90 in summers when interns and seasonal faculty arrive.
HERL has made an impact. When Cooper traveled to the Paralympic Games in Paris last summer, he saw people from all over the world competing using technology developed in some form by HERL — whether they knew it or not.
Cooper is also part of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. "His expertise and extensive contributions to the Paralympic community as well as his commitment to the Olympic and Paralympic Movements will play a vital role in furthering the advancement of our USOPA mission," said USOPA President Jackie Washington.
Welcome Strangers
And Cooper is becoming something of a wheelchair celebrity himself. He says strangers, usually those close to members of the disabled community, sometimes recognize him when he travels in the U.S. or abroad.
They stop and say, "Are you Rory?"
As nice as that is, Cooper says recognition doesn't matter compared with the progress being made to let people in wheelchairs live as they choose. With every technological improvement, the dream comes closer.
"It is starting to show that we are achieving the ultimate, the original goal of the (Americans with Disabilities Act), which was that people with disabilities would be seen as people that can and do contribute to society."
Rory Cooper At A Glance
- Founded the Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL) at the University of Pittsburgh in 1994 and won a bronze medal in the 1988 Seoul Paralympic Games.
- Overcame: Paralyzed at 20 years old after a bus crashed into his bike.
- Lesson: "I don't like to just waste my time."
