Detachable Module for Semi-automating a Conventional Wheelchair

Wheelchairs assist people with disabilities to become productive members of their communities. About 650 million people of the global population, have disabilities. Studies show that around 65 million of these require a wheelchair. The main purpose of the project is to design and develop a module that can be attached to any conventional wheelchair model in order to make it self-propelling. There are a wide variety of wheelchairs that are available in the market. However, the maneuvering of these wheelchairs by the patient himself and for an outsider is difficult and usually results in further injuries. Thus, considering these aspects we introduce this new design concept for a wheelchair which has a much simpler structure compared to the complex versions currently available in market. The module is designed to reduce the effort of wheelchair users during manual propulsion. It will be entirely electric and is a new concept of transportation for the disabled. The module was designed in Autodesk Fusion 360 and force analysis was carried out in ANSYS Workbench.