Technology is not just a toy for fanciers to have a “cool” experience, but also a partner to maintain human’s dignity and life quality. The high-tech wheelchair invented by several university students of Swiss has enabled wheelchair riders to “act alone rather than seek help from others”.

In the film X-Men, Professor X was sitting on a suspension wheelchair full of technology and moving freely.

However, in the reality of urban life, it is difficult for disabled persons and elderly with mobility difficulty living in old residential buildings to move, for it’s too difficult to install the old buildings with a lift. Even if they manage to go outdoors, they have to endure a lot of hardships when they encounter curbs and stairs. Today, a scientific invention of several university students of Swiss has brought good news to them. Without relying on a lift, or assistance from families or friends, the high-tech wheelchair can ascend stairs of a high-rise building with dozens of floors easily and can also easily cross common obstacles in the streets. Common people can also “walk” as freely sitting in the wheelchair as Professor X did.

Good-looking+ high-tech

The alternation of blue and black, the metal texture and the smooth streamline, the high-tech wheelchair appears high-tech and modern, which fits the aesthetics of the youth today very well. When Scewo wheelchair is moving on the flat ground, its two wheels maintain the balance, driven electrically. When it is climbing stairs, its caterpillar track will descend automatically to touch the ground lower than the wheels, so the wheelchair’s motion is controlled by the caterpillar track. The rubber on the caterpillar track will hook onto stairs and propel the wheelchair to move ahead. When the wheelchair reaches the highest stair, the extra pair of small supporting wheels can prevent the wheelchair from turning over. In this way, it not only can guarantee the speed on the flat ground, but does not affect the smoothness in passing the obstacles.

“Science and technologies have made a leap-frog progress, while the design of wheelchair has remained unchanged for decades.” A member of the wheelchair designer team said that their original intention to design the project was to utilize the latest electronics and aesthetic design knowledge to thoroughly redesign the wheelchair so that the wheelchair can also catch up with the era of new technology.

One of the very humanized designs is that the caterpillar track of the wheelchair can rotate with the change of gradient to guarantee that the user on the wheelchair can stay horizontal and prevent it from tilting forwards or backwards while ascending the stairs and causing discomfort or even danger to the rider. The designers said, basically Scewo wheelchair ascends the stairs at a speed of one step per second. While the wheelchair is ascending stairs, the users can control the motion of the wheelchair by operating the adjustment lever and changing their own center of gravity.

You know, it takes a huge investment ranging from hundreds of thousands of Yuan to millions of Yuan to install an old building with a lift. Residents are also in disputes on the tough issues such as the lift affecting day lighting, the sharing of costs and later maintenance. With such a high-tech wheelchair, the elderly and disabled persons will be able to go upstairs and downstairs alone.

A Walking “Transformer”

Other than ascending stairs, crossing obstacles is no doubt another requirement of wheelchair users when going out alone. To cover a distance which might only take five minutes for common people, due to various obstacles along the route such as stairs and thresholds, it might take more than half an hour for wheelchair users. With Scewo, wheelchair users will be able to easily cross most common obstacles on the road such as stairs.

The self-balancing wheelchair offers three different driving modes based on the difference of terrain. In the “safety” mode, the wheelchair stays static, which is mainly convenient for the users to go up and down; in the “lift” mode, it enables the users to stay eye level with other partners that are standing or stretch their hands to reach an object at a higher position; in the “track” model, it can increase the friction force and travel safely on the smooth surface, which can be applied in scenes such as snowfield, sand-gravel surface and slope.

According to the data uploaded onto the crowd funding website Patreon, Scewo was put into design at the end of 2014. Nine months later, its rudimentary model was created. After making a deep probe into the demands of users, the team has made several improvements based on the technology and public aesthetics. “It is just a sample at present, which is costly and not so firm.” The designer team said frankly that at present, they wished to employ more university students to join the team of Scewo through crowd funding, so as to speed up the development process. They will try to release the first Scewo electrically powered wheelchair that can be really put into application and help the handicapped by 2018.

(Source: Beijing Daily)