Several years ago, as a graduate student at MIT, Amos Winter spent a summer in Tanzania surveying wheelchair technology. What he found was a disconnect between products and the lives of their customers. “You had normal wheelchairs that worked fine indoors but were tough to take off-road, and you had hand-powered tricycles that worked pretty well on smooth terrain over long distances, but were difficult to manage off-road and way too big to use indoors,” Winter says. “I saw a need for a product that could go fast and efficiently on rough terrain, but was still small enough to use indoors.” That insight resulted in the Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC), developed at the Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Laboratory, which Winter directs. The LFC is an early success story in the emerging field of low-cost, high-performance technology for the rural poor. The novel device, which is powered with a hand lever, incorporates a single-speed, variable mechanical advantage drivetrain. Grasping high on the lever increases torque, while grasping low increases speed. The all-terrain design goes 80 percent faster and enables 50 percent higher peak-wheel torque than a conventional wheelchair. It’s also constructed from standard bicycle parts, making it easier to repair. GEAR Lab is
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