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Segway Wheelchair Adaptor


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Hi Segway experts. 

So... my wife had an accident 18 months ago and is now a paraplegic. She is 44 and was very adventurous and active before here accident. It’s almost impossible to use a wheelchair around our neighbourhood. We are also active outdoors people and a wheelchair is very limited in the Aussie bush

 So I am interested in trying to hack a Segway to move a wheelchair outside. I have this idea of trying to make an adaptor that would allow a Segway Mini Pro (an perhaps in future a larger offroad unit) into a power unit that attached to the front of her wheelchair. 

Would you have any interest in a kicking around some ideas on how to attach a Segway to power a wheelchair - based on what you have learned

If we can make this work it would be ten times cheaper and way way better than anything on the market and really add to the quality of life for wheelies.

There are a few challenges… It would need to be safe… it would be great if a paraplegic could attach it and remove it from a wheelchair themselves and it would be better not to have to make permanent or irreversible modifications to the wheelchair

It would be good if the attachment could be strong enough to create the stability of a four wheel platform. The additional weight from the chair would also help a bit with traction (as would some beefier tyres)

A re-bent after market - extra-long handle could be used to reach to the rider. It would be wise to have a Deadman’s switch wired to the Segway that shuts off the power from the handle for safety (or perhaps that activates and deactivate the foot pressure switch) . 

a would really value a discussion of any learnings from trailers or other similar hacks you know about 

cheers

Dicko 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wow, your wife is wonderful, that she still keeps her adventuring spirit after such an experience. I wish I could help you any with this, I think you have a good and possible idea, and these segways are impressively capable offroad, especially with the right tires. Unfortunately this is way beyond my expertise, though I believe you have found the right forum for this question. I think some people here may be able to help with this, at least based on some highly technical threads I've read here. I hope some of them see your post, it seems like an idea worth exploring further!

Best to both of you!

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On 9/3/2020 at 7:08 AM, Dicko said:

other similar hacks you know about 

Hello,

On the French forum, we have a member who works with disabled people and who wanted to transform the Mini (link to rico's profile). 

I had asked to create a section for the mobility of people with disabilities but there has not been much of shareholdings...    it's here https://forum.urban360.com/index.php?/forum/196-handimobe/

Here on EUC FORUM you have this topic from @Wilsonintexas "I am using my mini to pull a wheelchair"

https://forum.electricunicycle.org/topic/8507-joy-stick-control/

image.png

 

In europe we have a not cheap segway patents NINO

https://www.nino-robotics.com/

Edited by jojo33
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  • 4 months later...

FYI - Valdir let me know that you were working on this project and I joined the forum so that I could let you know that I have hacked a Segway MiniPro such that I can control it using a joystick. I've just made the repository public so that you can access it if you are interested: https://github.com/mjeronimo/minipro. Please let me know if you have any questions. I'd be happy to provide some advise and take any contributions to the code. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FBfc8GOeKc&lc=Ugx7X19AUKPOzZtq7Ex4AaABAg

 

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