Just imagine...

Just imagine, You depend on a vehicle to get around every day, and now you have the opportunity to design and realize a device that can meet your every need. You can be creative! Here, you can make the most of your knowledge and skills and at the same time improve your creativity.

This is exactly what you've been waiting for? Great! Now it's up to you to enter the competition, either alone or with a team. If you start as a team, everyone benefits, not only you, but your colleagues, the Roll-On association and especially the users of the eventual device.

But before we get started, let’s imagine the following scenario: You wake up in the morning and plan your day in your mind. As a wheelchair user, you want to take on all your daily challenges as independently as possible. Asking people for help is easy for you, but you are convinced that no one who can climb stairs would allow himself to be carried. OK, let’s return to you lying in your bed. First of all, you have to get up. Your vehicle makes this easy. The wheelchair lies parallel to the bed, its horizontal surface level with the upper edge of your mattress, so you can push your body directly onto it. You roll to the bathroom, as your vehicle converts to a sitting position. You shower, wash and dress, and off you go to the kitchen for breakfast. By tightening your thigh and lap belts and tipping the vehicle into a safe standing position, you can reach for your box of cereal from the upper cabinet shelf. On the way to work, you decide to do some shopping. The vehicle’s side pockets on either side offer sufficient room for your purchases. To make things easier, your vehicle can even move sideways along the shop shelves. To enter your place of work, there is a ramp and a lift. (Remember, doors are a challenge – paraplegics can assume a semi-standing position and easily reach the handle or knob to open and close doors, while for quadriplegics, this is impossible). Your work table is height adjustable. During the day, you regularly change your position, roll to a meeting or meet with colleagues in the cafeteria. All the while, your vehicle can help you to stand – finally, some interesting conversations at eye level!

So, you find it easy to relate to this scenario? Very good! The above scenario shows you what this device should be able to do, ideally. However, it will be difficult, maybe even impossible, to fulfill all your wishes and requirements. So, you will have to decide on your priorities. Several teams in various countries will be working simultaneously on the same task. In the attached PDF, we have compiled details about Roll-On’s open source platform. As a participant, you will receive a platform account, enabling you to download model studies and other information, and eventually share your results with others, in the spirit of open sourcing.

What happens to the resulting ideas and designs?

Good question! When you join, you are participating in an open source project. Patent specifications, inventions, design principles, construction plans, idea sketches and artwork are available to you worldwide free of charge and free of licenses for use in subsequent collaborative development. What we want to achieve is crowd innovation! We believe that inventing also has something to do with discovery. We are looking for you!
Inventors, tinkerers, designers, developers. If we combine our inventive spirit worldwide, we can really make a difference! You will get the boilerplate from us. You can use existing blueprints, construction principles, idea sketches, artwork as a starting point and we will be extremely pleased if you share your further developments with the "Rollchair" community, so that everyone can profit again!

Wheelchair project - wheelchair