top bar
Test Driving Report of an Electric Wheelchair on a Simple Experimental Slope

Koichi Hirata, February, 2002


We borrowed an electric wheelchair (Aisin Seiki Co. Ltd.), and drived on the simple experimental slope to image a waving ship which was developed by us. Length of the imaging slope is about 11 m. It had 5 deg of slope angle at a middle position to image the waving ship.

A below photograph shows the driving line. After we drived on the imaging slope many times, we made sure the driving characteristics of the electric wheelchair as follows. Though the characteristics were affected by operations.

(1) In the first half of the slope, the wheelchair can keep a straight line easily.
(2) When a joystick (controller) was keeped to straight, the wheelchair moved to down (the right) from the peak of slope. (3) The driver operated the joystick to up (the left), and revised the line.
(4) The wheelchair keeped the straight line again.

We could not measure the detailed operation, a driving locus and torque of the wheels, because the wheelchair was lent. However, we felt that the electric wheelchair could keep well-balanced on the waving slope. The operation is easier than that of a hand-operated wheelchair.

Therefore, if the driver keeps the sense of equilibrium on a ship, there is no slip between the tires and a road surface, and the driver keeps suitable operation, it is considered that the electric wheelchair can be operated easily on a waving ship.

[ Barrier-free HOME ] [ NMRI HOME ]
Contact: khirata@nmri.go.jp