UI student Scott Daigle improves wheelchairs

6:01 pm | Engineering, University of Illinois | No comment

Scott Daigle, a University of Illinois first-year graduate student in mechanical engineering thought about how gear shifting is good and essential to motorists and bicyclists. He then thought of the wheelchair users as he watched them drive themselves around the University’s campus.

He noticed that their arms were the only ones they can rely on to go as fast as they could, so he came up into an idea of putting a gear shifting device to the wheelchair. He made a set of design enhancements that arrived in a continuous variable transmission.

University of Illinois mechanical engineering graduate student Scott Daigle shows the first prototype of a wheelchair he is building that features a continuously variable transmission on each wheel designed to maximize a user's shoulder function.

Wheelchairs with gears are already common, but Daigle’s idea is different.  It automatically detects your conditions or situations like if you want to go fast, it will shift into a higher gear, or if you are climbing up a hill, it will shift into a lower gear without the user thinking about it.

Scott, 22, came up with the idea in January, worked on the plan last spring in a technology entrepreneurship, and developed the first model last summer.

He considered the weight, cost and flexibility to refine his innovation with the other wheelchairs. It doesn’t have to be heavy so that it could be a relief for the wheelchair users not to develop shoulder pains. His innovation decreases the amount of strength that a wheelchair user exerts.

Wheelchair designs outside the market require the users to do the shifting while in Daigle’s design, it magically shifts itself for the users. The device detects the ground inclination and pace and knows what gear should be.

Daigle, a self-motivated young man, dreams to start his own company so that he can promote his inventions to the world.