An Improved Wheelchair for Playing Wheelchair Tennis

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of my project is to see if wheelchairs for playing wheelchair tennis can be further improved upon. I intend to design and test a model system that utilizes a hands-free electronic interface that can lock and unlock an axle, thus enabling at times one-handed drive or two-handed drive to occur. If successful, I hope on a larger context that my results will cause two things to occur: - stimulate further discussion and engineering research on additional innovations for wheelchairs used in wheelchair tennis and other sports played by disabled athletes, and - explore further safety and performance mechanisms that can be engineered into manual wheelchairs utilized by the broader population of disabled people. Methods/Materials Metal Pipes, Beams, and Disks, Arduino Uno Microcontroller, Servomotor, Electronic Components, Voice Recognition Module, Universal Joints, Couplers I broke down the creation of my model wheelchair test system into four different phases: 1) Integration of an Arduino microcontroller to a small electronic components 2) Integration of voice recognition in the Arduino interface to operate the axle coupling mechanism 3) Construction of a scale model test wheelchair 4) Integration of the electronic interface and mechanical framework Results After constructing 3 prototype wheelchair models, I successfully created a model wheelchair, which I performed tests on. Following a flowchart I created, I tested my project in 4 different experiments that were designed to represent all possible situations that could be encountered. My wheelchair returned expected results for each test. Conclusions/Discussion - I was able to design, build, and test a user controlled, hands-free, one-handed drive system in a model wheelchair so my hypothesis is correct. - I believe that the innovations I have developed can be applied to conventional wheelchairs for disabled people. - For future experiments, I would like to build a real tennis wheelchair and test it by playing competitive wheelchair tennis. I would also like to optimize the one-handed driving system by including braking and motorization. - A one-handed drive system that can be selectively engaged and disengaged should be seriously considered as an improvement for future wheelchairs.

Competition history

• CSEF 2015 Applied Mechanics & Structures · Entry S0309

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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