Lever Wheelchair for Disabled People: an Answer to the Increasing Demand for Wheelchair Mobility

Abstract

Young, active disabled people with impairment of lower extremities tend to be as active, as possible considering their disabilities. For purposes of leisure and sport many wheelchair solutions have been already proposed, yet the struggle to provide efficient and economically rational means of transport that increase their mobility is still ongoing. According to various authors lever wheelchairs have certain advantages in the given field: ergonomic work conditions and high human work efficiency resulting from the lever drive concept. In our works we created a pre-prototype of such wheelchair. Our projects goal was to try to implement many different solutions which were to provide rich functionality: adjustment of levers’ length, adjustment of levers’ axis of rotation position, changeable gears including reverse gear, innovative brake mechanism. As a result we could assess which of the functional assumptions were reasonable and easy to implement and which could be useful however make the design very complicated, heavy and thus irrational. Our main conclusion was that if the lever driven wheelchair concept is to become popular, one of the key-issues in their design must be: simplicity. Additional functionality seems attractive during theoretical studies, but it’s implementation very often causes too much complication and weight gain.

Keywords: Wheelchair, lever wheelchair, disabled people mobility, prototype

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100673