Comparison Study of Wheelchair Accessory for Pushing Doors: Straight and Arc-Shaped Designs

• Main Author: Abdullah, Soran Jalal
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: T Technology (General); TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
• Online Access: http://eprints.unisza.edu.my/585/1/FH03-FSTK-16-04923.pdf; http://eprints.unisza.edu.my/585/
• Institution: Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin

According to the 2012 UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) annual report, 1.3% Malaysians were disabled out of which 34.3% were people with physical disabilities. Furthermore, wheelchair users could face hindrance in opening and navigating through manual doors. Several solutions have previously been proposed to assist wheelchair users in this aspect. However, these solutions are complex and still not widely available in the market. In the current work, two simple designs of wheelchair accessory for pushing doors have been modeled and simulated. One of the wheelchair accessory is straight (arm-like design) with one wheel at the end, while the other is an arc-shaped design with several wheels along the arc. The straight arm-like design must be attached on both sides of the wheelchair to enable pushing of doors hinged on different sides, whereas the arc-shaped design inherently works for doors hinged on either side. For both the accessory designs, motion analysis simulations were conducted. The two designs were compared to evaluate their functionality in terms of pushing force required and door swing angles achieved. It is anticipated that the simple door pushing accessory for wheelchairs will allow the user to easily push doors.