Amos Winter: The cheap all-terrain wheelchair

496,059 views ・ 2012-11-20

TED


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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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Living with a physical disability isn't easy
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anywhere in the world,
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but if you live in a country like the United States,
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there's certain appurtenances available to you that do make life easier.
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So if you're in a building, you can take an elevator.
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If you're crossing the street, you have sidewalk cutouts.
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And if you have to travel some distance farther
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than you can do under your own power, there's accessible vehicles,
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and if you can't afford one of those,
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there's accessible public transportation.
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But in the developing world, things are quite different.
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There's 40 million people who need a wheelchair but don't have one,
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and the majority of these people live in rural areas,
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where the only connections to community, to employment, to education,
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are by traveling long distances on rough terrain
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often under their own power.
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And the devices usually available to these people
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are not made for that context, break down quickly,
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and are hard to repair.
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I started looking at wheelchairs in developing countries in 2005,
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when I spent the summer assessing the state of technology in Tanzania,
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and I talked to wheelchair users, wheelchair manufacturers, disability groups,
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and what stood out to me
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is that there wasn't a device available
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that was designed for rural areas, that could go fast
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and efficiently on many types of terrain.
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So being a mechanical engineer,
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being at MIT and having lots of resources available to me,
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I thought I'd try to do something about it.
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Now when you're talking about trying to travel
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long distances on rough terrain,
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I immediately thought of a mountain bike,
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and a mountain bike's good at doing this
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because it has a gear train,
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and you can shift to a low gear if you have to climb a hill
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or go through mud or sand
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and you get a lot of torque but a low speed.
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And if you want to go faster, say on pavement,
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you can shift to a high gear,
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and you get less torque, but higher speeds.
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So the logical evolution here
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is to just make a wheelchair with mountain bike components,
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which many people have done.
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But these are two products available in the U.S. that
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would be difficult to transfer into developing countries
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because they're much, much too expensive.
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And the context I'm talking about is where
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you need to have a product that is less than 200 dollars.
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And this ideal product would also be able to go
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about five kilometers a day so you could get to your job, get to school,
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and do it on many, many different types of terrain.
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But when you get home or want to go indoors at your work,
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it's got to be small enough and maneuverable enough to use inside.
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And furthermore, if you want it to last a long time out in rural areas,
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it has to be repairable using the local tools, materials and knowledge
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in those contexts.
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So the real crux of the problem here is,
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how do you make a system that's a simple device
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but gives you a large mechanical advantage?
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How do you make a mountain bike for your arms
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that doesn't have the mountain bike cost and complexity?
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So as is the case with simple solutions,
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oftentimes the answer is right in front of your face, and for us it was levers.
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We use levers all the time, in tools, doorknobs, bicycle parts.
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And that moment of inspiration, that key invention moment,
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was when I was sitting in front of my design notebook
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and I started thinking about somebody grabbing a lever,
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and if they grab near the end of the lever,
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they can get an effectively long lever
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and produce a lot of torque as they push back and forth,
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and effectively get a low gear.
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And as they slide their hand down the lever,
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they can push with a smaller effective lever length,
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but push through a bigger angle every stroke,
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which makes a faster rotational speed, and gives you an effective high gear.
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So what's exciting about this system
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is that it's really, really mechanically simple,
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and you could make it using technology
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that's been around for hundreds of years.
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So seeing this in practice,
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this is the Leveraged Freedom Chair that,
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after a few years of development,
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we're now going into production with,
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and this is a full-time wheelchair user --
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he's paralyzed -- in Guatemala,
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and you see he's able to traverse pretty rough terrain.
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Again, the key innovation of this technology is that when he wants to go fast,
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he just grabs the levers near the pivots and goes through a big angle every stroke,
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and as the going gets tougher, he just slides his hands up the levers,
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creates more torque, and kind of bench-presses his way
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out of trouble through the rough terrain.
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Now the big, important point here is that
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the person is the complex machine in this system.
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It's the person that's sliding his hands up and down the levers,
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so the mechanism itself can be very simple
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and composed of bicycle parts you can get anywhere in the world.
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Because those bicycle parts
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are so ubiquitously available, they're super-cheap.
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They're made by the gazillions in China and India,
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and we can source them anywhere in the world,
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build the chair anywhere, and most importantly repair it,
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even out in a village with a local bicycle mechanic
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who has local tools, knowledge and parts available.
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Now, when you want to use the LFC indoors,
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all you have to do is pull the levers out of the drivetrain,
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stow them in the frame, and it converts into a normal wheelchair
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that you can use just like any other normal wheelchair,
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and we sized it like a normal wheelchair,
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so it's narrow enough to fit through a standard doorway,
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it's low enough to fit under a table,
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and it's small and maneuverable enough to fit in a bathroom
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and this is important so the user can get up close to a toilet,
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and be able to transfer off
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just like he could in a normal wheelchair.
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Now, there's three important points that I want to stress
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that I think really hit home in this project.
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The first is that this product works well because
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we were effectively able to combine
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rigorous engineering science and analysis with user-centered design
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focused on the social and usage and economic factors
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important to wheelchair users in the developing countries.
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So I'm an academic at MIT, and I'm a mechanical engineer,
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so I can do things like look at the type of terrain you want to travel on,
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and figure out how much resistance it should impose,
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look at the parts we have available and mix and match them
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to figure out what sort of gear trains we can use,
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and then look at the power and force you can get out of your upper body
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to analyze how fast you should be able to go in this chair
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as you put your arms up and down the levers.
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So as a wet-behind-the-ears student, excited,
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our team made a prototype,
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brought that prototype to Tanzania, Kenya and Vietnam in 2008,
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and found it was terrible
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because we didn't get enough input from users.
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So because we tested it with wheelchair users,
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with wheelchair manufacturers, we got that feedback from them,
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not just articulating their problems, but articulating their solutions,
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and worked together to go back to the drawing board and make a new design,
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which we brought back to East Africa in '09
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that worked a lot better than a normal wheelchair on rough terrain,
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but it still didn't work well indoors because it was too big,
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it was heavy, it was hard to move around,
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so again with that user feedback, we went back to the drawing board,
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came up with a better design, 20 pounds lighter,
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as narrow as a regular wheelchair, tested that in a field trial in Guatemala,
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and that advanced the product to the point
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where we have now that it's going into production.
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Now also being engineering scientists,
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we were able to quantify the performance benefits of the Leveraged Freedom Chair,
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so here are some shots of our trial in Guatemala
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where we tested the LFC on village terrain,
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and tested people's biomechanical outputs,
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their oxygen consumption, how fast they go,
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how much power they're putting out,
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both in their regular wheelchairs and using the LFC,
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and we found that the LFC is about 80 percent faster
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going on these terrains than a normal wheelchair.
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It's also about 40 percent more efficient than a regular wheelchair,
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and because of the mechanical advantage you get from the levers,
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you can produce 50 percent higher torque
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and really muscle your way through the really, really rough terrain.
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Now the second lesson that we learned in this is that
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the constraints on this design really push the innovation,
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because we had to hit such a low price point,
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because we had to make a device that could travel
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on many, many types of terrain but still be usable indoors,
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and be simple enough to repair,
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we ended up with a fundamentally new product,
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a new product that is an innovation
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in a space that really hasn't changed in a hundred years.
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And these are all merits that are not just good in the developing world.
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Why not in countries like the U.S. too?
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So we teamed up with Continuum,
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a local product design firm here in Boston
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to make the high-end version, the developed world version,
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that we'll probably sell primarily in the U.S. and Europe,
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but to higher-income buyers.
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And the final point I want to make is that I think
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this project worked well because we engaged
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all the stakeholders that buy into this project and are important to consider
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in bringing the technology from inception of an idea
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through innovation, validation, commercialization and dissemination,
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and that cycle has to start and end with end users.
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These are the people that define the requirements of the technology,
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and these are the people that have to give the thumbs-up at the end,
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and say, "Yeah, it actually works. It meets our needs."
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So people like me in the academic space,
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we can do things like innovate and analyze and test,
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create data and make bench-level prototypes,
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but how do you get that bench-level prototype to commercialization?
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So we need gap-fillers like Continuum that can work on commercializing,
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and we started a whole NGO to bring our chair to market --
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Global Research Innovation Technology --
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and then we also teamed up with a big manufacturer in India, Pinnacle Industries,
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that's tooled up now to make 500 chairs a month
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and will make the first batch of 200 next month,
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which will be delivered in India.
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And then finally, to get this out to the people in scale,
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we teamed up with the largest disability organization
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in the world, Jaipur Foot.
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Now what's powerful about this model
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is when you bring together all these stakeholders
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that represent each link in the chain
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from inception of an idea
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all the way to implementation in the field,
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that's where the magic happens.
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That's where you can take a guy like me, an academic,
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but analyze and test and create a new technology
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and quantitatively determine how much better the performance is.
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You can connect with stakeholders like the manufacturers
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and talk with them face-to-face and leverage their
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local knowledge of manufacturing practices and their clients
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and combine that knowledge with our engineering knowledge
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to create something greater than either of us could have done alone.
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And then you can also engage the end user
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in the design process, and not just ask him what he needs,
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but ask him how he thinks it can be achieved.
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And this picture was taken in India in our last field trial,
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where we had a 90-percent adoption rate where people
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switched to using our Leveraged Freedom Chair over their normal wheelchair,
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and this picture specifically is of Ashok,
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and Ashok had a spinal injury when he fell out of a tree,
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and he had been working at a tailor, but once he was injured
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he wasn't able to transport himself from his house
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over a kilometer to his shop in his normal wheelchair.
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The road was too rough.
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But the day after he got an LFC, he hopped in it,
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rode that kilometer, opened up his shop
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and soon after landed a contract to make school uniforms
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and started making money, started providing for his family again.
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Ashok: You also encouraged me to work.
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I rested for a day at home.
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The next day I went to my shop.
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Now everything is back to normal.
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Amos Winter: And thank you very much for having me today.
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(Applause)
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