Team Members
Francisco Antunez, Layali Bazar, Graham Cope, Pierre Exantus, Jonathan Gordon, Sam Jones, Olivia Miller, James Zhao
Abstract
Our group was tasked with designing a wheelchair conversion kit that can convert a regular wheelchair into an autonomous wheelchair for developing countries. Currently autonomous wheelchairs available on the market are outrageously priced, ranging between $2,500 to $15,000, with less expensive autonomous wheelchairs limited in autonomous features that assist the user. To develop this kit, our team focused on creating an affordable autonomous wheelchair conversion kit without sacrificing autonomous functions that would be useful to the user. To ensure autonomy was abundant in our design, our team included LiDAR for room mapping, sonar sensors for obstacle avoidance, and a chain-driven drivetrain system to transform a regular wheelchair into one with motorized capabilities. In addition, our team elected to create an application which can be downloaded on the user’s mobile device, which utilizes the built in functions of the mobile device including but not limited to its camera, microphone, and GPS, to aid our wheelchair kit in functionality such as voice commands and eye tracking to ensure that our product does not require sufficient dexterity or cognitive ability to utilize all of the functions included in our wheelchair kit. Because we plan to make this design available to sell directly to those who would use the product, emphasis was placed on the ease of assembly of the final design. That said, our wheelchair kit does not require any tools for assembly outside of a screwdriver and Allen keys as the entire kit is attached to the frame of the wheelchair via clamps. Despite all the autonomy included in our wheelchair kit, with careful selection of material and manufacturing methods, our team was successful in keeping a total cost for the kit, excluding the mobile phone and the wheelchair, at a mere $1,729, which is nearly 35% cheaper than the nearest competitor.
Pitch Video
3D Interactive Product Model
The following is an interactive 3D model of the product design. You can view and rotate the product assembly in different orientations and views, including an exploded view to see the various parts that make up the assembly.