Design of a Motor Driven Household Vertical Lift Elevator Chair

International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT), 2013

https://www.ijert.org/innovative-designof-staircase-climbing-wheelchair https://www.ijert.org/research/innovative-designof-staircase-climbing-wheelchair-IJERTV2IS2164.pdf The average human age is increased and acommon problem that the elderly people are facing is 'impaired mobility'.New policies continue to make newly built areasaccessible to disabled, but old buildings can't be redeveloped because they are without elevators. So"Staircase Climbing Wheelchair' is a need of day, at least in the developing countries. Many designs are already converted into the actual products but they are not cost effective or affordable.This paper proposes a new and most importantly 'Affordable' design of a stair-climbing capable mechanism for the wheelchairs for elderly or disabled.

Wheelchairs are one of the only means by which disabled people get to go around places. Developed countries are almost well equipped with the infrastructure to accommodate them, as in ramps and lifts, which accompany stairs. But for developing and under developed countries in Asia and Africa, such facilities are far from reality. In our own country, there are a large percentage of buildings in urban and semi urban areas, built without consideration for accessibility. A normal wheelchair user need to be lifted and carried manually by two more helpers to get to different floors of a multi-storied public building or even their own flats and apartments. One solution for this would be to modify civil structures, but that would neither be economical nor practical. So, the other solution would be to engineer a wheelchair that can ascend stairs. These are available in the market, like SCALEVO, but being the products of Japanese and American research labs, they are aimed at people who can afford such technology; not for the less fortunate majority. What made stair climbing costly for a powered wheelchair, was the complicated wheel motion, and the electronic control systems. So to simplify this we propose a Star Wheel, taking inspiration from the rack and pinion mechanism, and the cluster wheel mechanism. Also, the complex and expensive control systems can be replaced by an even more sophisticated, but freely available human brain, that of the assistant or any helper. The effort for the motion is taken by a 250W permanent magnet DC motor powered by two 12V battery, with high torque (reduction using chain) and the helper need to take care of only maneuvering the device, during the climb up or down the stairs. This same motor can provide powered motion in the forward direction, by reversing polarity, and attaching an auxiliary circular wheel. People with considerable upper body strength would be able to hold the handle, lift themselves and mount on to it. Assistance is required for the old and weak. To solve this, we considered different ideas and found that, by removing the backrest and placing the seat slightly below the average height of a bed, chair or toilet-seat (450mm), with a slight outward slope, the user can simply slide on to it from the back! If he is a very weak person, then he can be helped by an assistant to do so, still reducing the assistant's effort considerably; earlier, the person needed to be lifted manually and placed by him. Thus there is transposed entry to the wheelchair, along with conventional entry. The backrest is locked in place after entering. A two wheel plus one caster-wheel design ensures 3-point ground contact at all time and has a lower tipping angle, also it makes the frame design simple and light. So, three high traction wheels, vibration isolation using suspension and a high torque drive makes it suitable for rough terrain. The frame and drive is made minimal enough to reduce cost, using standard parts as far as possible, and the ability to be assembled, modified and reassembled.

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000

Stairways into building or public vehicles are important environmental barriers that limit accessibility to users of wheeled mobility devices. Powered van lifts can serve as an alternative to stairs, ramps or porch lifts, but they have not yet been carefully evaluated for this purpose. The objectives of this study were to characterize the usability of a powered van lift device for wheelchair users and demonstrate the utility of using a multi-method evaluation approach to identify opportunities for design improvements. Twenty experienced wheeled mobility device users either alone (n=11) or with the assistance of a caregiver (n=9) completed tasks using a powered van lift. Measurements were made on the unrestricted space required to enter and exit the lift, time required to enter and exit the lift, errors made during the operation of the lift's control, and self-reports of device usability obtained with a questionnaire. Results indicated that the clear space required for the lift was less than what would be expected for a ramp and that the self-reported usability of the device was reasonably good. However, the time required to use the lift was high and participants had difficulty operating the lift's safety-belt. Improvements should be made to the design of the safety-belt to increase usability. Additional studies that include other user populations are recommended to investigate the efficacy of the device as an alternative to stairs, ramps and "porch" lifts.

IRJET, 2020

In this thesis, the design and analysis of an affordable automatic step climbing wheelchair for physically disabled is presented. The motivation is to cater the needs of disabled people who are at economically disadvantage position. Global statistics of the disabled persons report shows that the number of disabled people is increasing with the increase in world population. It may be noted that the electrically operating lifts are not common in two or three storey buildings. Therefore, step climbing wheelchair can make life easy for disabled people in terms of accessing any location in a building without help of others. Advanced wheelchairs that are available in the market are having high cost, i.e., approximately ten lakh rupees. So in this thesis a cost effective automatic wheelchair is designed which can be made available for the masses. It helps physically disabled and elderly people to move across stair cases easily.

International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT), 2014

https://www.ijert.org/stair-climbing-mechanism-for-wheelchair-with-asistance https://www.ijert.org/research/stair-climbing-mechanism-for-wheelchair-with-asistance-IJERTV3IS120614.pdf This study is about a DC motor driven Stair-climbing mechanism for wheelchair to provide mobility for physically disabled persons with minimum efforts for the assistant. Stairs remained as vital and inevitable means to reach the elevations in domestic and commercial buildings. Options to them are Elevators, Ramps but they are not feasible in all cases. Simplicity of this designs lets practical implementation at low cost.

IJERT, 2018

This project describes the design as well as fabrication and installation of a material handling unit which works by mechanical means. The design was developed keeping in mind that the lift can be operated by mechanical means so that the overall cost of the lift is reduced and also human efforts are reduced to transfer materials. Also such design can make the lift more compact and much suitable for medium scale work. Conventionally an electric lift is used to lift the material and transfer it to different floor or material is lifted by the human efforts. But in this case along with lifting a material, efforts are used to move the material up to a certain height by incorporating power transmission mechanism. Though project is designed to transfer load only up to a certain height but it will be capable enough to transfer the load up to three floors in near future. Thus a lifting mechanism is customized which is affordable, occupies less space, requires less maintenance and its design simpler than the electric lift.

Journal of Biomechanical Science and Engineering, 2015

This study investigated propelling the attendant-propelled wheelchair on a level surface and up slopes, as well as pulling on the wheelchair while descending slopes, with varying resistive loads caused by the slopes and also by changing the weight of the system. The research questions in this study were: 1) How do attendants naturally adapt their walking speed and upper extremity posture when pushing/pulling an attendant-propelled wheelchair? 2) How did this vary with increased resistive loads? 3) What individual differences occurred between participants? When ascending, as the resistive loads increased the wheelchair speeds decreased. The Spearman's rank-order correlation for monotonicity showed was strong, negative correlation between horizontal pushing force and wheelchair speed, which was statistically significant. The maximum mechanical power used by the majority of participants when ascending was approximately 60W at the highest resistive load. The posture learning forward with pushing relatively lower from horizontal direction in ascending, kept joint moments in upper extremity low, up to 60N horizontal force. Over the 60N in horizontal force, the performed pushing force in horizontal direction still kept joint moments low. In descending, the wheelchair speed in most participants did not have clear monotonicity against the increase of the resistive load. Aligned the upper arm and forearm corresponding to the vector of pulling force reduced joint moment in shoulder and elbow. From these findings a model will be established, which can be used in future research to establish how hard different terrains are for wheelchair users and test improvements to the environment as well as the design of the wheelchair.

One of the basic problems of user on manual wheelchair is overcoming architectural barriers (kerbs, stairs etc.) on its way. Even though many research studies have been reported in different fields to increase the independence of wheelchair users, the question of overcoming obstacles by a wheelchair always remains as topic of discussion for many researchers. In this paper, the author has proposed a manual stair climbing wheelchair concept which can overcome the architectural barriers to a considerable extent. Major part of the paper focuses on the proposed creative design concept and concludes by discussing upon the physical working model developed for the proposed design solution.

2012

The average human age is increased and a common problem that the elderly people are facing is 'impaired mobility'. New policies continue to make newly built areas accessible to disabled, but old buildings can't be redeveloped because they are without elevators. So "Staircase Climbing Wheelchair' is a need of day, at least in the developing countries. Many designs are already converted into the actual products but they are not cost effective or affordable. This paper proposes a new and most importantly 'Affordable' design of a stair-climbing capable mechanism for the wheelchairs for elderly or disabled.

IJIRAE:: AM Publications,India, 2024

Pro wheelchair users are at a height disadvantage during many function activities, such as transferring or reaching. Retrieving objects from the ground or a higher shelf while seated in the wheelchair can be both difficult and unsafe. Lateral transfers between surfaces at different heights can be hard and unstable. Sit-to-stand transfers are made simpler with a higher seat. This research project seeks to assist reach and transfers by designing a system to raise and lower a wheelchair seat over a 4'' range. The project followed a multi-step iterative design process that included: needs assessment by conducting interviews and surveys, identify design needs from different stakeholder groups; analysis of stakeholder groups' feedback and synthesis into design criteria; and creation of design concepts for the adjustable height wheelchair seat; evaluation of the design by setting up heuristic evaluation criteria and performance of user testing; design revision based on user's test performance and feedback. The design process included fabricating and testing of various concepts, validating design through user testing, and addresses technology transfer of the device.