Low-Cost Arduino Powered Electric Wheelchair

By on October 30, 2017
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While electric wheelchairs are a vital tool for those with restricted mobility, they typically cost around $2,500, an amount that’s not the most affordable. To address this problem, a group of students from Aviv High School in Israel have come up with a low-cost, 3D-printed motor conversion kit.

This 3D printed electric wheelchair kit connects to a standard wheelchair without modifying the underlying frame, but it makes the chair significantly more mobile. Plus, it does so for a fraction of the price — around $500 dollars.
Every part of the kit can be bought separately, and assembled using a set of tools, an Arduino Uno, and a 3D printer. Impressively, the printable parts were fabricated on a Printrbot Play.


There’s an added bonus, too; the kit is comprised of parts available to every FIRST Robotics Competition team around the world. This means that you can contact your local FRC team to assemble your newly fashioned wheelchair.

“We, as a team, decided the parts used in the kit should be common FRC items that teams all around the globe are comfortable with.
….No matter how good the design is, no matter the effort we put into the project ourselves, we are one team, just a handful of students. If we’re alone on this mission it’s doomed to fail. We made it as simple as we could so fellow teams around the world could contribute what little they can and actually get something done.”

About Luca Ruggeri

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