The Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC) was developed through the MIT Mobility Lab, which Amos Winter created as a graduate student in 2007. The LFC is a mobility aid specifically designed for developing countries. It has a variable mechanical advantage lever drive train that enables its user to travel ten to 20 percent faster on tarmac than a conventional wheelchair.

In this video, Amos Winter discusses the LFC and results of trials in East Africa. The team recently founded a non-profit, Global Research Innovation and Technology (GRIT), to manage the scale-up and distribution of the LFC.

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING] I don't know how to describe it. But it's quite useful, and you might say it's a life-saver for those who are more active wheelchair users, those who want to participate in different [? excursions ?] like-- The leverage freedom chair is a mobility aid specifically designed for developing countries. It has a variable mechanical advantage lever drive

    00:00:35 train that enables its user to travel 10% to 20% faster on tarmac than a conventional wheelchair, and off-road like no other mobility aid available. The user effectively changes gears by simply moving his hands on the levers-- grasping high increases leverage, while grasping low increases rotational speed. Human upper body power outputs were used to optimize the drive train geometry for high performance on a wide range of terrains.

    00:01:01 All moving parts on the LFC are made from bicycle components, making the chair manufacturable and repairable anywhere in the developing world. From August 2009 to January 2010, six LFC prototypes were trialed by mobility aid users in East Africa. The trial confirmed that the LFC is more capable off-road than any other product, and that people with disabilities from many demographics produce more power with less exertion using the leverage drive train.

    00:01:28 Oh, yeah. Yeah, the LFC is very useful in the village, because there are some places that you can't use a vehicle, and it's expensive. So it's easier to use. I can now visit my friends in that village without difficulty, with a little bit of assistance, where there are rough roads now. Under a $50,000 grant from the Inter-American Development

    00:01:54 Bank, the next generation LFC will be developed, prototyped, and trialed in Guatemala starting in the spring of 2010. This grant will facilitate the testing of 30 LFCs with Guatemalan wheelchair users, as well as support the development of production tooling to manufacture the LFC on a large scale. [MUSIC PLAYING]