Wheelchair Conversion Kit

Designing an attachment to convert a traditional wheelchair to a motorized one

Problem:

Wheelchair bound individuals are burdened with lowered mobility. Since moving to Pittsburgh for university I realized how difficult it would be to traverse the hills and inclines with a conventional wheelchair.

Motorized wheelchairs do exist but are often expensive and difficult to get covered by insurance.

Solution:

A low-cost portable wheelchair motorization kit, controlled via a joystick on the arm rest, driven by a pair of brushless motors and powered by a lithium-ion battery pack

Why it ended:

One of the issues with this project was cost. I didn’t have the money to build a prototype of the system. Additionally, when evaluating battery technologies to use it was difficult to find something on par with traditional motorized wheelchairs which use heavy battery packs that would limit the desired portability of the system and increase the required motor specifications.

The final nail in the coffin, at least for now, was the discovery of hand bike wheelchair conversion kits, which solve the very problem I was trying to address. My original idea was to use a single joystick rather than a bike style handlebar, but nonetheless these provide a cheaper alternative to traditional motorized wheelchairs