Cycling chair: a novel vehicle for the lower limbs disabled
Takayuki Takahashi, Yuuki Nishiyyama, Yukiko Ozawa, Eiji Nakano, Yasunobu Handa · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2005
The goal of our research is to develop a practical vehicle for lower limbs disabled to improve their mobility and health. The most significant mechanical character of the proposed vehicle is that it is driven by the lower limbs of the disabled themselves. We call it as Cycling Chair. Disuse of the lower limbs leads many subsidiary issues on health, deteriorating the whole-body circulation, it is the most serious problem, cases so-called the disuse syndrome. The proposed Cycling Chair solves those problems by using the leg-driven mechanism. In this paper, the mechanism of the Cycling Chair and the way to drive the chair by paraplegics are discussed. Some experimental results are also presented.