SpinLife.com Scholarship Program
2009 "Innovation in Motion Scholarship" Winner
Imagine the wheelchair of the future. What advancements and features will chairs have in 2009 that will help make students' lives easier or more productive?
Kathleen Lehigh
The wheelchair of the future will focus on the people who use them. Therefore, as most people with wheelchairs must use so much more effort to do everything, these wheelchairs of the future will be for the active user. That means that the focus of these "Chairs of 2029" will be extremely light, simple, and durable.
As I sometimes also use a walker for mobility, I have found that I like the ability to be able to lift and turn my walker in any direction. I know that there are scientific achievements that have found newer, stronger, and lighter materials for mobility equipment. I would like for the Chair of 2029 to have some method to make it even lighter when needed (some kind of way to combat gravity - as with magnetic repulsion or pneumatics on the chair). One of the main purposes of this would be handling the chairs into vehicles without help from others.
Similar to some of the advancements today, where there is a motor feature that helps with propelling some wheelchairs when the terrain gets too hard to push through, the chair of 2029 should be able to sense both when you are having to apply more force, or when you and your muscles are becoming fatigued and need some extra "push." Guess one could refer to the Chair of 2029 as the "Smart Chair."
One of the other items that would need to be addressed with the chair of the future would be "carrying stuff." Carrying items while in a wheelchair of today, you are either contorting to put things on the back, or looking like a pack mule. The chair of 2029 would have unique capabilities for discreet storage. This could be similar to the Honda Minivan that found a way to make the chairs lay down flat to carry large items in the cargo region, or provide larger discreet and concealed storage areas.
An issue that could also be addressed by the Chair of 2029 would be assisting with opening doors. Even though by 2029, most buildings should be disabled accessible, it would be wonderful if the footplates and sides of the wheelchair could have a bit of protective rubber for the doors (and the chair) when some "brute force" is needed to get in through a heavier door.
So many ideas, so many designs, and so little time. To truly design a spectacular chair of tomorrow, you should have a design competition between three different engineering schools. Require that each student on the team spend at least 1 - 3 days in a chair following their regular routine (with no cheating and no help). After the team members have been challenged in a wheelchair, propose the new design challenge and give them as little as one month to develop an innovative chair of tomorrow! Once these individuals have seen the need, and are put on a short timeline, I believe they will surprise many with what they can develop.
