Students Create Inexpensive Motorized Wheelchair

Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

Creating a custom wheelchair for siblings with neuromuscular disease.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a debilitating neuromuscular disease. It involves motor nerve cells in the spinal cord, which affects walking, eating, and breathing. SMA is the number one genetic cause of death in infants. Two brothers with SMA in the Salt Lake City area recently came to the attention of researchers at Brigham Young Uni versity’s Engineering Capstone program. Capstone is a two-semester program that gives thousands of engineering students hands-on experience with real, industry-sponsored projects.

Tanner, age 3, and Skyler, age 20 months, use wheelchairs, having never walked. However, since SMA affects most of their muscles, wheeling themselves around is extremely tiring. Motorized wheelchairs are prohibitively expensive, difficult to transport, and very heavy.

This past year, five undergraduate mechanical engineering students designed, manufactured components, and built an inexpensive, lightweight motorized wheelchair specifically for children like Tanner and Skyler. (See Figure 1)

The chair is made with a PVC frame, which, they say, is strong enough for a child up to 50 pounds or about 6 years old, and is controlled by an armrest-mounted joystick like other chairs. The students produced the chair for less than $495. That cost, they estimate, might make it the world’s least expensive motorized wheelchair—and possibly the lightest at just over 20 pounds.

As part of the project, the team presented chairs to both boys and posted plans for the wheelchair, along with the list of materials and components necessary to build it, online at www.OpenWheelChair.org  , so other parents can assemble chairs of their own.

For more information, visit http://news.byu.edu 

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