Rotacaster Wheelchair Made of Lego Profiled in EE Times

Sept. 19, 2012 - PRLog -- Applications for the Rotacaster range from material handling equipment (hand trucks, trolleys, dollies, carts, skates) to shopping carts and luggage; from conveyor transfers, pipe rollers, and other inverted applications to robotics and patient lifts in medical settings.  
Rotacaster Wheel Limited is an Australian company with a focus on innovative product design.  Rotacaster is a patented multi-directional wheel quickly becoming the alternative to the swivel caster. The Rotacaster is a sturdy, robust wheel, adaptable to a vast array of applications and it overcomes many of the limitations associated with the traditional swivel caster wheel.
Lego wheelchair does the YouTube rounds was a feature article recently authored by  Sylvie Barak.  Barak noted, “Most engineers I’ve ever met can be categorized by two things; their love of problem solving, and their love of Lego.  Combine both and you get something like the motorized Lego wheelchair, currently doing the rounds on YouTube.  Six Lego Mindstorms NXTs, 12 Mindstorms motors, 12 Lego Mindstorms touch sensors, 12 Rotacaster multi-directional wheels and a "whole load of Lego Technic" went into building the 44 pound motorized chair, capable of carrying a person weighing up to 198 pounds (90kg).  Currently controlled by a four-directional joystick, the Lego wheelchair’s designer, British iOS programmer and Lego enthusiast Simon "Burf" Burfield, apparently hopes to upgrade the contraption to include Bluetooth, so it can be controlled from people’s phones. You can see pictures of the chair in its various stages of build-out here. So far, there’s only one prototype, but it goes to show how far a bit of DIY, a dollop of imagination and a lot of Lego can go.”
The full article may be read at http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4391496/Le...-
EE Times has been the voice of the electronics industry for almost 40 years and is the largest independent engineering resource for design decision makers in the electronics industry.  Every day tens of thousands of design engineers, design managers, technologists, and business executives turn to EE Times to find the needed information for global competitiveness.  
Contact Rotacaster at www.rotacaster.com.au or via phone: 61 2 4907 8100.


Rotacaster Wheel  Ltd.
www.rotacaster.com.au
Peter McKinnon, Managing Director
info@rotacaster.com.au
+61 2 4907 8100