Wheelchairs can help physically disabled people moving from one place to another, but usually it can’t help them to climb stairs. And that’s the biggest substantial limitation of wheelchairs. But as we live in the world of technology, so no barrier should stay in front of us for long. To solve the wheelchair’s limitation, Japanese researchers at the Chiba Institute of Technology (CIT) near Tokyo have designed a robotic wheelchair that can convert its wheels into legs when needed, walk up steps and turn a perfect circle.
The specially designed wheelchair has four wheels and five axis. There is a joystick through which the wheelchair user tells the chair in which direction the chair needs to go. The robotic wheelchair has five sensors on its feet to detect any incline or decline in terrain. When the chair comes before stairs or a bit high thing above ground, the wheels lift themselves off the ground and move in a walking style. During that time the wheelchair adjusts the pitch of the seat to keep the user’s body as level as possible. While the wheelchair moves in a walking style, it can tackle steps and various other obstacles smoothly. The wheelchair can even turn 360 degrees around its center with the help of some on-board stabilizers. In addition, users can reverse the wheelchair or get out of tight spots a lot easier compared to standard wheelchairs.
At present, the newly developed wheelchair is in prototype stage. Now they are busy in improving the wheelchair’s function
Source : Chiba Institute of Technology
Thanks To : DigInfo, CNET
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