CHENNAI : Ramalingam and Naveen Kumar, two city-based engineering graduates were announced as winners of the 3M-CII Innovation Summit (Bangalore), under the Social Innovation category. PL Ramalingam talks about their innovation, a child-standing wheelchair.“We were batchmates in college and were always ambitious. When projects were given to us, we used to look at how this would be useful to others,” says the mechanical engineer, who graduated from Panimalar Institute of Technology in 2017, along with Naveen.
After dabbling with innovations, including a vehicle which runs on compressed air and solar energy, the duo started working on a child-standing wheelchair. “We witnessed a big challenge in the wheelchairs used for patients with spinal cord injuries. Patients often need to stand for physical therapy, requiring human assistance,” he says.
In an attempt to solve this problem, they began building a prototype of a wheelchair that morphs its shape to help the patient stand up and sit. “Standing wheelchairs usually weigh around 120 kg, but this innovation has reduced it to 19 kg,” he shares.The child-standing wheelchair is a replacement for the motorised standing wheelchair. “We want to provide all the features, including optimised armrest cuts making it convenient for the user to switch positions,” he explains.
Patients who use this wheelchair can also move double the distance with assistance in comparison to the previous models, he claims. “We are looking for support to develop our prototype. This innovation will surely help several people with disabilities. We are planning to extend this to children and also make it available in hospitals,” he adds.