DISEÑO CONCEPTUAL DE UN ACOPLAMIENTO DE MOVIMIENTO ELÉCTRICO A UNA SILLA DE RUEDAS MANUAL PARA PROPORCIONAR AUTONOMÍA A PERSONAS DEPENDIENTES

Abstract

Dependent people, by different physical or psychological reasons, see their moving capability to perform basic activities of daily life limited. The use of a manual wheelchair permits them a greater mobility in both interior and exterior spaces. An alternative to this wheelchair is already existing on the market: the electric wheelchair; however, the economic cost is high. Under this scenario and due to a high number of conventional wheelchairs existing in Spain, the present work proposes the design, by means of computational geometry, of a new low cost electromechanical coupling that permits to transform a manual wheelchair into an electric one, improving this way the autonomy of dependent people in different scenarios.