Title: Study of wheelchair performance for street barriers.
Author: Tsutomu HASHIZUME, Ikuo YONEDA, Takuya FUJIKI (Tokyo Metropolitan Technical Aid Center) Yukihiro FUJIOKA, Minoru KAMATA (University of Tokyo) Hideo KAWAI (Tsukuba Technical College)
Proceedings of 12th Japanese Conference of Advancement of Rehabilitation Technology . Vol.12, pp.1-4 (August, 1997)
Keywords:
Author to whom correspondence be addressed:
Tsutomu HASHIZUME
Tokyo Metropolitan Technical Aid Center
TEL: 03-3235-8577

Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to identify a relationship between performance of hand propelled wheelchairs and environments. The revolutions of both driving wheels were measured by encoders and the driving torque were measured using torque measurement devices. Driving over a curb on an even road and slope road and driving on a slope road toward the side were adopted as the experiment conditions. Additionally, positions of the axis of large wheels were changed. As the result of the experiments for driving over a curb, the back position of the wheel axis required bigger torque than the frontal position and enforce the torque more sensitive to the height of the curb. When the wheelchair traversed a slope, the wheel of the down side needed bigger torque than the other side wheel. A momentum during crossing the slope was 1.4 times as it during driving the even road. These results is useful for development of new wheelchairs, reconstruction of roads and development of new traffic system.