Our mission is to design and build a tricycle attachment. The attachment is to be affordable, and locally produced, and easy to use on the terrain of a developing country. 

 

The functional requirements placed on wheelchairs in developing nations are vastly different then those on wheelchairs in nations like the US. The users must be able to cover long distances on very poor paths as well as navigate tight indoor spaces. Currently there are decent solutions to either problem, with the difficulty being combining them. 

A tricycle attachment for standard 4-wheel wheelchairs gives the owner the advantages of a standard wheelchair in tight spaces, but allows them the freedom of a tricycle after only a few movements.

 

The Final Design and Prototype:

The following page describes the final design our team arrived at and the prototype we built this semester.

The project will be continuing this summer, with two students traveling to workshops in Vietnam, Kenya and Tanzania. They will continue prototyping and testing - so check back for updated designs and more current website links.

                Prototype Design

 

The Preceding Design Stages:

                     Initial Strategy 

                     Final Concept

                Most Critical Module

The project was also displayed at the MIT Museum during the D-Lab exhibit, the presentation can be found on this page:

                MIT Museum