Recent Developments in wheelchair technology

Recent developments

Recent technological advances are slowly improving wheelchair and EPW technology. Some wheelchairs, such as the iBOT, incorporate gyroscopic technology and other advances, enabling the chair to balance and run on only two of its four wheels on some surfaces, thus raising the user to a height comparable to a standing person. They can also incorporate stair-climbing and four-wheel-drive feature motorized assists for hand-powered chairs are becoming more available and advanced. The popular Segway Personal Transporter is a mobility device that was a direct outgrowth of the development of the iBOT wheelchair. The Segway, which is basically an iBOT with two wheels removed, was developed explicitly to increase the number of units produced and take advantage of the economies of scale to make the iBOT affordable to wheelchair users. The $25,000 iBot, which was developed as a joint venture between Johnson and Johnson's Independence Technology and Dean Kamen's DEKA Research, was discontinued in January 2009.
The addition of geared, all-mechanical wheels for manual wheelchairs is a new development incorporating a hypocycloidal reduction gear into the wheel design. The 2-gear wheels can be added to a manual wheelchair. The geared wheels provide a user with additional assistance by providing leverage through gearing (like a bicycle, not a motor). The two-gear wheels offer two speed ratios- 1:1 (no help, no extra friction) and 2:1, providing 100% more hill climbing force. The low gear incorporates an automatic "hill hold" function which holds the wheelchair in place on a hill between pushes, but will allow the user to override the hill hold to roll the wheels backwards if needed. The low gear also provides downhill control when descending.
A recent development related to wheelchairs is the handcycle. They come in a variety of forms, from road and track racing models to off-road types modelled after mountain bikes.
There have been significant efforts over the past 20 years to develop stationary wheelchair trainer platforms that could enable wheelchair users to exercise as one would on a treadmill or bicycle trainer.^[4][5] Some devices have been created that could be used in conjunction with virtual travel and interactive gaming similar to an omnidirectional treadmill