Wheelchair

A New Zealand designer is revamping the traditional wheelchair design with a new model that frees the arms of the user. Instead of using the hands to create movement, the user moves their upper body to direct the two wheels.

Indiana-based wheelchair mobility specialist BraunAbility and Ford will be showing a wheelchair-accessible Explorer at this week's Chicago Auto Show. Called the Explorer MXV, the conversion is meant to put the comfort of a wheelchair-accessible van into the rugged, capable hands of an SUV.

Wheelchair users have had to live with the fact that stairs, sharp curbs and doorsteps either required assistance to maneuver, or made access to some locations impossible. The tracked TopChair-S, however, is designed to change that.

The Smart-Drive MX2 is an electric drive designed to attach to an ordinary wheelchair and give a boost up hills and over difficult surfaces whenever it's needed.

The Freewheel wheelchair is aimed at keeping tabs on user's physical activity, with a sensor array that measures things like speed, distance, acceleration incline and decline and collates it into a smartphone app.

Unlike other stair-climbing wheelchairs we've seen over the years, the B-Free Chair relies on a set of robotic "pedrails" that look almost like skinny tank tracks. These articulated pedrails allow the electric to grip the staircase firmly as it navigates up or down.

We've seen tracked wheelchairs before, that are able to take on steep or uneven terrain. For regular surfaces, however, wheels make more sense. That's why a group of students are creating the Scalevo electric wheelchair, which features wheels for cruising and tracks for climbing stairs.