Development of step-climbing casters for wheelchairs

Abstract

Elderly caregivers are increasing by aging of society in Japan. One of the hardest action for them is to make a wheelchair with a person on climb a step. In order to reduce burdens of the caregivers, assistive products to ease burdens of step-climbing action are desired. The purpose of this study is to devise a mechanism to reduce caregivers’ burdens when they make wheelchairs climb steps and to develop casters with the devised mechanism. Prior to the development of the step climbing mechanism, measuring experiments of forces a caregiver apply to a wheelchair in a step-climbing action is conducted using normal casters. In reference to the result of the experiment using the normal casters, the authors devise step-climbing casters with a burden reduction mechanism. It utilizes the reaction force from the step induced by an unnecessary force applied by caregivers in a step-climbing action. Mechanical analysis of a wheelchair with the burden reduction mechanism is carried out numerically to show the effectiveness of the mechanism. Measuring experiments of forces a caregiver apply to a wheelchair in a step-climbing action is conducted using the developed step-climbing casters. The result of the analysis and the experiment indicate that the burden reduction mechanism reduces the total maximum force necessary to make a wheelchair climb a step, leading to the conclusion that the devised burden reduction mechanism is effective.

Keywords

• wheelchair
• step-climbing
• caster
• mechanism
• barrier free
• caregiver