DEVELOPMENT OF A RECHARGEABLE ELECTRONICALLY CONTROLLED MOTORISED WHEELCHAIR FOR DISABLED AND ELDERLY PEOPLE

K. M. Adeleke; N. O. Olaniran; R. O. Oyeniyi; M. O. Idris

K. M. Adeleke Department of Mechanical Engineering, Adeleke University, Ede, Nigeria
N. O. Olaniran Department of Electrical/Electronic Engineering Technology, Osun State College of Technology, Esa-Oke, Nigeria
R. O. Oyeniyi Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology, Osun State College of Technology, Esa-Oke, Nigeria
M. O. Idris Department of Mechanical Engineering, Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria

Keywords: Motorized, Disabled, Physically challenged, Wheelchair, Paralysed patients

Abstract

The physically challenged, old-age people, and most paralysed patients need means of transportation from place to place to ease their movement. The earlier available wheelchairs are manually driven that need extra effort of either the physically challenged or an assisting person to move. Nowadays, the level of communication and socialization strongly depends on easy access to mobile transportation. This paper presents a developed motorized wheelchair that facilitates movement of physically challenged people both in the hospital and in their home by taking into account aesthetics, low cost, ease on maintenance with market competitive advantage using locally sourced materials. The developed wheelchair is designed to work for 3 hours under a maximum load of 90 kg with navigation buttons. A working efficiency of 65 % was obtained under full operation. This design brings a new competition into the wheelchair market and gives more comfort to the physically challenged peoples’ mobility than the existing manually driven ones