A foldable, all-terrain tracked electric wheelchair

This is some concept renderings of an idea to extend our working prototype of a tracked personal transporter to become a new type of foldable wheelchair.

Abstract/motivation:

Many existing wheelchairs design are bulky, ugly, slow and confined to flat surfaces. While tracked wheelchairs do exist, such as the Action Trackchair, they are large and expensive (~€10k). Likewise, while folding wheelchairs also exist (see e.g the Zinger) these are often not suited to all-terrain performance. The significance of this project is to harness the technology underpinning the ongoing emergence of urban transport ridables and use this to produce an exciting new wheelchair form factor. A key differentiator is that our tracked platform uses commodity polyvee belting which is standard method for industrial power transmission. This means that our tracks can be simpler and cheaper than more elaborate, custom solutions. The vision is to create a collapsible chair design that exploits the tidy flatness of our platform to allow the whole device to fold down to a briefcase size and shape. Portable and folding wheelchair designs tend to struggle with neatly accommodating the large wheels. As shown in the Appendix, using the flat tracked base platform provides the perfect frame for a chair superstructure to fold into. This will allow the folded-up tracked wheelchair to be stowed in the boot of a car, or easily brought along on the bus or train. Such an affordable and portable device should materially enhance the autonomy and mobility of people with physical disabilities.