Technology

The Indian road-friendly wheelchair

Roads in India are famous for their rugged terrain. Try walking and running on them without a fall and you can consider yourself blessed. Try driving on them without many a bump and you are double blessed. But imagine traversing its surface on a wheelchair…..especially one that was meant for the smooth tarmac like finish of the western roads….

Pearlman thought of making a difference

Despite being an American, Jon Pearlman has tried to make life easy for the Indian with disability. After a strenuous research for two years, he has devised an electric wheelchair tailor-made for Indian users. The innovative machine has bigger wheels, manual steering and high battery back-up.

“Keeping in mind the Indian user, its price has been fixed much lower than other similar chairs available in India, said Jon. Having a technical acumen since childhood, he got the inspiration to devise this chair in his school days. His stepfather Mike Gardner who walked with a limp researched onerously to devise a wheelchair to suit his needs. Jon used to sit with him and help him in developing the design at the age of 12.

His technically-inclined mind got further nurturing from his father and he took up mechanical engineering in university. Having done M.Sc in Mechanical engineering from Cornell University, he is currently pursuing a doctorate in rehabilitate science from the University of Pittsburg.

He worked arduously to devise this chair. A team of six experts was constituted, out of whom, three were Indians and they examined the needs, expectations and problems of Indian wheelchair users. Thereafter, they collected 600 pictures of homes of the Indian users. “Once we got the sufficient data, we were perplexed and didn’t have a direction to move on,’ he said.

Then Jon decided to evaluate the pictures on the basis of suggestions of people from all parts of the world. All the pictures were put on a web portal and people were invited to give their opinion after looking at any 50 pictures chosen at random. Seventy five people from six countries analysed the pictures and gave their feedback.

“Taking cognizance of this, we worked on a design which would perfectly suit an Indian house,” he said.

He has negotiated with two Indian companies to manufacture such wheelchairs. Within a couple of months, the production will start and price will be fixed at around Rs 25,000 as against the wheelchairs in the market which are available for more than Rs 45,000.

Source: US engineer designs electric wheelchair. Asian Age, Daily, New Delhi, 14th April 2007.