Reflection – 4-wheeler as an impairment aid

I reflected some about about the 4-wheeler we drove during the lecture. It was very good in many ways, but I could still see problems with it.

The first and most obvious problem was the foot brake. If you are paralyzed from the waist down, you will not be able to use it at all. I’m not sure what the difference with the two handbrakes and the footbrake so I’m not sure what impact it would be removing it totally. But you needed to push the footbrake when switching from forward to reverse and back. Also the two handbrakes could be very hard using if the strength in your hands are affected.

The steering was also very sluggish, and you had use the whole body to steer, specially in low speeds.

One solution could be to implement a joystick similar to the one in an electric wheelchair. There are several thing that could be gained from this. Combined with power steering and electric break support you could get the exact same functions as with the normal controls. The problem with the joystick is that increasing speeds makes it both harder to use and more dangerous. Maybe you could be able to choose how high the top speed should be while using the joystick.

If the wheels were further apart than on the 4-wheeler that we tried, the stability may increase, but I’m not sure what that would do for such things as ground clearance, maybe that would have to be increased. I also thought about some kind of seat belt, but I’m not sure about how good that would be if you actually roll over.