Development of an electric wheelchair for the mobility of people with chronic reduced mobility

Abstract: Having a patient who is unable to move on his own generates stress on his family, since this type of disease has repercussions on the economic and emotional stability of both the patient and the people who assist him. The present work is a proposed solution for the development of low-cost national technology with high social impact, which was initially designed for the care of a 6-year-old patient with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, resident of the Pabellón de Arteaga, Aguascalientes, Mexico. The patient has suffered from this disease since birth, which prevents him from performing daily activities and, above all, from moving around on his own. Therefore, an electric wheelchair was designed and built to lighten or reduce the work of carrying and transporting the patient and to reduce or avoid possible injuries to the patient, as well as to the people assisting him. Designs of the device were elaborated in Solidworks® according to the dimensions of the ISO 2570-255 standard. The control system was designed as open loop control and programmed in Phyton language. The chassis and support structure were constructed from readily available materials of proven strength and is equipped with a swivel caster base. For the semi-automation and control system, a mechatronic system was built based on an Arduino® Nano data acquisition board connected to various electronic or electric-electronic modular elements. Design and construction of product allows an adequate transport and displacement of people of any age, weight and gender due to statistical analysis developed and applied determined that having several person conditions o characteristics made not significant difference. Additionally, majority perception of people that operated the chair indicated that it was comfortable, that they felt safe using it and also it was easy to operate the EWC. Nevertheless, as a future work, improvements must be done to have a better safety system and stop control system. Once the development of the electric wheelchair was completed, it was donated to the disabled child for routine use and operation, contributing to improve his quality of life.

Keywords: Electric Wheelchair, Disable People, Automation

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004856

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