1.6 Industrial Survey
Visit to Ostrich Mobility India Pvt. Ltd.
Figure 6: Ostrich Mobility Instruments
Ostrich Mobility Instruments Private Ltd., with its registered office in Bangalore, India is dedicated to design affordable Personal Mobility equipment (PME) and hospital furniture. Our team had been to this firm in order to understand the problems and fields to be taken care of while designing the wheelchair from hardware as well as software point of view.
The office of Ostrich Mobility India Pvt. Ltd. is located
From the visit on 12th August 2013, our team learnt that there are a few areas which need prime concern while designing an electrically powered wheelchair such as,
- Suspension is very important because there can be many uneven surfaces which may cause mechanical vibration of the wheelchair which may adversely affect.
- Mechanical braking is very much necessary as electrical braking fails when the battery dies or there is a fault. They use a mechanical brake which stops the wheel from moving unless and until a signal to move forward is given to the motor. The brakes can be unhinged mechanically when maintenance of the wheelchair is required.
- Controller-There needs to be a master control which controls every aspect of the wheelchair, which in our case is the raspberry pi.
- Wheels- Smaller the wheel size, more stable is the movement as the force on the wheels get distributed equally.