It wasn't until Jordan Nguyen faced the prospect of life in a wheelchair that he started thinking about mind control.
The ability to move things with thoughts that is.
The electrical engineering student was about to drop out of the University of Technology, Sydney when he injured his neck diving into a backyard pool.
When he wasn't able to move an inch for an entire day, Nguyen wondered if this was how he would spend the rest of his life.
The near-tragedy was the best thing that happened to him, Nguyen, 30, says.
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"It changed my perspective on life," he told AAP on Thursday.
Nguyen stuck with his studies and began exploring the possibility of a thought-controlled wheelchair. What was originally an impossible feat led to the first prototypes in 2008.
He developed TIM - Thought-controlled Intelligent Machine - a wheelchair controlled by a user's brain-waves.
Nguyen says the inspiration came from people who were left with just their mind for control, such as those with locked-in syndrome.
He is now hoping to create an even smarter wheelchair, with new devices featuring greater levels of interaction.
Besides that, the biomedical engineer has partnered with the Cerebral Palsy Alliance on a project to assist in the early diagnosis of cerebral palsy and autism in babies.
Nguyen says he has gone from knowing little about disability to being on the cutting edge of technology to improve their lives.
"I didn't know anything about disability, I only had one friend with a manual wheelchair."
As a disability advocate today, he can count many more friends.
