Reinventing The Wheelchair

Thirty-one-year-old Matt Eddy is travelling across the U.S. in his electric wheelchair to bring more attention to the needs of those with muscular dystrophy.

Matt’s journey is daunting, and he’ll certainly encounter many challenges along the way. But the fact that a wheelchair can even make it across the country – let alone from one end of a town to another – puts the U.S. in stark contrast to poorer nations.

In the developing world, 20 million people in need of wheelchairs don’t have them – and the traditional wheelchair design simply doesn’t fit the needs of people who live on rough, unpaved roads in African and Asian villages.

That’s why Amos Winter, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at MIT, is leading a project to build a better wheelchair – or at least one more suitable for the rest of the world. He's said that his goal is to create a chair in which the rider can comfortably travel six miles a day and that can be sold in Africa for under $150. Winter joins Word of Mouth to describe the new chairs he and his students designed - including a three-wheel design with a hand crank.

(Photo courtesy of Amos Winter)