[BobbyB]

Wheelchair-assist device mobilizes customers

SuperQuad seeks more funding to take its Wijit to a wider audience
Sacramento Business Journal - July 6, 2007by Melanie TurnerStaff writer

Dennis McCoy | Sacramento Business Journal
Shannon Hollsten, CEO of SuperQuad, displays a Wijit-equipped wheelchair.




SuperQuad LLC is capable of manufacturing 1,000 units of its Wijit product a month, but needs more money to market the driving and braking device that attaches to the wheels of a wide range of manual wheelchairs.

The Roseville company is looking to raise another $7 million to launch an advertising campaign and start larger-scale production. The company brought its Wijit to market late last summer and has sold them to fewer than 300 customers.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacrament...09/story8.html

[BobbyB]

Self-balancing wheelchair wins Autodesk Inventor Student Design Contest
Posted Jul 6th 2007 6:40PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Transportation


A group of Dutch technical students won this year's Autodesk Inventor Student Design Contest with their design for a tricked-out self-balancing wheelchair. Functionality details are pretty light -- the site just says the chair uses "a gyroscope [to] remain vertical while only using two wheels" -- but there's no shortage of sweet gangsta lean or fly rims in the render. Screw the Autodesk competition -- these kids should've sent this design directly to Bad Boy.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/06/s...tudent-design/

[BobbyB]

Wheelchair can be guided by tongue

July 05 2007 at 02:04AM

Paris - Engineers in Britain and the United States have devised a wheelchair that the disabled can steer using their tongues, New Scientist says.

The gadget works thanks to a tiny microphone that points inside the ear canal and is sealed off from outside noise by a plug.

When the wearer moves his tongue, this forces air around the mouth, causing pressure changes that provide a unique signature of the movement.

The pressure changes are conveyed from the mouth to the ear canal via the so-called Eustachian tube. The microphone detects the pressure shifts and transcribes them into electrical signals, which are sent to a computer that then converts them into commands to steer the wheelchair.

The chair, invented by Ravi Vaidyanathan at the University of Southampton and Lalit Gupta of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is an improvement on present technology, New Scientist says.

Quadriplegics typically have to suck or blow into a straw, or move a computer cursor to guide the wheelchair, which can be unhygienic or irritating.

The tongue-guided device is to be launched by a Cleveland, Ohio, company by the end of the year, according to the report, which appears in next Saturday's issue of the British science weekly. - Sapa-AFP

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_i...1205934C443380