Stair-Climbing Up and Down Wheelchair based on Upper Body Biomechanics (the second report)

Abstract

This study proposes a novel stair-climbing up/down wheelchair based on lever propulsion control using human upper body. The developed stair-climbing up/down wheelchair consists of manual wheels with casters for planar locomotion and a rotary-legs mechanism based on lever propulsion that is capable of climbing up and down stairs. The wheelchair also has a passive mechanism powered by gas springs for posture transition to shift the user's center of gravity between the desired positions for planar locomotion and stair-climbing up and down. In the previous research, we presented its feasibility of climbing up the stairs. In this paper, we present an advanced study on climbing down stairs using the proposed methodology. Relevant experiments were performed to investigate its performance and verify that the wheelchair users can overcome the stairs independently by the proposed methodology.