Auto 3-Axis Wheelchair Base Balance and Adjustment

Here, the 3-AXIS auto wheelchair base balance and adjustment project has been presented. Its main objective that it always makes the sitting position steady and upright no matter what road surfaces and conditions are. The main focus is to make travel comfortable, confident and prevent any accident due to wheelchair fall down when he/she (mobility impairment person) goes along the uneven roads or terrain.

I saw most of the people and vendors were adding features, for example, gesture control, motorized wheels, obstacle detection and avoidance through the ML/AI application, video processing, sensor data processing, and so on. This has become common to every person and vendor. But, one thing I did not find is that nobody is actually working with wheelchair mechanics itself. They were only working on adding the features into the wheelchair but they were not making the entire wheelchair body safe and comfortable.

So, I looked at it from a mechanical point of view. I thought that unless the wheel-chair is made safe itself, adding the above-mentioned features won't have any effect. For example, if a mobility impairment person himself alone has to go through the road, which is not absolutely flat and plain, then the entire wheelchair body has to come into action rather than the features on it. Sometimes, wheelchairs can fall down due to weight imbalance.

If we add 3-axis suspension adjustment in the wheelchair, it will be controlled in such a way that it will always make sure the SITTING POSITION STABLE and UPRIGHT by counteracting the rough surfaces of the road automatically. It won't let a wheelchair person tilt in any direction.

Furthermore, to adjust wheelchair suspension parameters to fulfill user preferences, such as manual tilting, and elevating etc. two mode features can be added requirements. They are Travel and Non-Travel Modes.

Here, the Travel Mode is defined as the mode that can be applied when wheelchair persons are actually traveling along the road from home to the workstation or vice versa. Here, two sub-modes will be added, that is, automatic and user mode. In automatic mode, it will always make the wheelchair setting position upright and stable (no user tilting or elevating functionalities here) and in user mode, wheelchair persons can set their condition parameters, for example, tilt angle, elevation height, etc. After this, it will work automatically to counteract the road conditions to make sure the initial parameters set by them are steady and stable while they are traveling.

Non-Travel Mode is the mode that wheelchair persons can set when they are at home or at their workstation. This mode will allow them to do manual wheelchair adjustment when they are standstill most of the time, for example, tilting the wheelchair forward or backward or sideways when they get in or out of a wheelchair or when they need to stay inclined or declined road surfaces or you can elevate or drop your wheelchair ground clearance.