Team Chronos — a quartet comprising Sumit Patil, Pulkit Agarwal, and Sohan Jawale, all fourth year mechanical engineering students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) and Tanuj Jhunjhunwala (third year) — has designed the prototype of an electric wheelchair which bagged the first prize for the most sustainable design in the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop Design, and third prize in the Autodesk Inventor Student Design Competition 2011 held at IIT-M on November 16 last year. The competition — organised by IIT-M in association with Autodesk India (a world leader in 3-D design engineering) together with Bosch India and SAE India — challenged students to design a digital, cost-effective, and assistive rehabilitation device for people with any form of disability, using Autodesk software.

The innovative battery-powered electric wheelchair incorporates a semi-trapezoidal shaped track belt mechanism which allows the user to lean forward while climbing stairs, unlike in traditional wheelchairs where the user has her back to the stairs. Other original features include a push-back facility to incline the wheelchair at different angles, a cup holder, tilt sensors, two linear actuators to maintain the seat in horizontal position while climbing stairs, a joystick to control navigation, headlights, rear view mirror, and a manually controlled handbrake and backup battery for emergencies.

Team Chronos has been working at the Centre for Innovation (CFI), a student lab at IIT-M, for over a year to develop a prototype of a stair-climbing robot. At a national robotics competition held in October 2010 at the Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment in Chennai, organised by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, the Chronos team was one of five teams to be awarded top honours. “Since we had already done a major part of the work on our robotic project, it took us only two months to finalise the design for the electric wheel-chair. However, it underwent several changes as modifications were made at different stages to overcome limitations,” says Jhunjhunwala.

Looking ahead, even as members of the quartet are working hard to realise their academic goals, they are simultaneously monitoring the progress of the electric wheelchair. “We plan to present our design in the upcoming Dell Social Innovation Challenge annual international competition. This event will provide us the training and support to perfect and market our innovation, and we plan to make it our final year curriculum project. We are hopeful the wheelchair will be in the market within two years,” says Jawale.

God speed!

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)