h a l f b a k e r yI never imagined it would be edible.
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I frequently visit the wounded and disabled people at our local hospitals, and almost every time I'm there, I notice people push their wheelchair or walker backwards with their foot or feet. Moving precariously but easily by the power of their foot.
This half-baked wouldn't - it - be - nice - if
idea is about making a simple lightweight contraption that would reverse the power of the push to make the wheelchair, rolator or walker, move forward.
This is not an invention or idea but a call for thoughts about HOW to make it. I received some ideas about pedals with chains, but that's not something that's easy to attach and transform the direction of movement into something easy and available on almost any wheelchair and walker. It should work for one foot. Best if you can connect it with a cuff around the shoe on the good leg.
Tao
https://www.youtube...watch?v=tKp76r1A4dw
[doctorremulac3, May 03 2025]
string drive
https://www.youtube...watch?v=doKhd8kE0Ow
[bhumphrys, May 05 2025]
[link]
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Simple, tank treads. They put their feet on the top and kick moving forward. |
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Could have both treads turn a middle one that’s neutral as far as steering so it doesn’t turn back and forth with each kick. |
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Or just kick pedals turning a central wheel. I think bicycle style pedals would be too awkward and bulky. |
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Hmm, how about the foot rests they already have being hooked up to the drive mechanism? So just rest your feet but if you want to move forward start kicking. |
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Don't they already have this? Seems like a no brainer. |
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They don't. It's an excellent concept. |
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I've been tweaking this idea in my head for years now.
Sorry but, if I tell you HOW to make it all proprietary rights to patents becomes public domain and so no company will build it, so I'm not going to. |
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Without 'first-to-invent' rights re-established in Western societies and then enforced in all societies, so that inventors can thrive, we're all pretty much fucked and at the mercy of China which couldn't care less about intellectual property rights. |
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They will learn someday that you cannot demand genius or creativity, you kill them by both doing so until they explode in ways completely unpredictable. |
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I was thinking like those toy cars that have a ratchet mechanism so that when you push it backwards it winds up a powerful spring; when you release it the ratchet switches to a much higher gear and the toy zooms off across the floor into the distance. |
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//Without 'first-to-invent' rights re-established in Western societies and then enforced in all societies, so that inventors can thrive, we're all pretty much fucked and at the mercy of China which couldn't care less about intellectual property rights.// |
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You hit on the main difference between Chinese and Western culture with regards to technological innovation and it needs to be discussed. |
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Chinese people are smart, look at a world IQ map. Then how come everything they now celebrate as indications of the superiority of their society comes from western minds? Smart phones, airplanes, satellites, computers, nuclear weapons, electricity itself. The technology they brought to the world (from very smart people) gunpowder, paper, the oar a thousand years ago or more was immediately handed over to the emperor. The dynastic empire still exists with a different color hat, but the culture has never existed without its citizens being under the iron boot of totalitarianism. James Burke said it was because of Tao (link) but Tao itself is something that fits well with totalitarianism. |
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Americans invented, well, about everything in the modern world, and what was their attitude about kings? Our king once upon a time sent his army to control us so we killed them. Empower the individual, you empower the society's full potential. Crush the individual you've got a hive mind sheep herd and eliminated the motivation factor that moves us into the future. That's China. Their advancements were all just adopted from the free west. Hell, their communist government was even adopted from the west. You've got a culture thousands of years old and you dump it all because of a book some guy in the west who never held a real job wrote about how all jobs should be done? And I've talked to many Chinese people now living in my country who are the first to agree with this. (Which is why they moved here.) |
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In such a culture the individual has no impetus to innovate because why? They won't benefit from it. The emperor will just take it. Now take those Chinese inventions of gunpowder and the oar and give it to western cultures like England, France and Spain. What did they do with those? They took over the planet, because somebody with a few ships and a couple of hundred men armed with these technologies can conquer the world because THEY will benefit from it, not just some emperor. Yes, they had kings, but nothing as powerful as the Chinese. The west had relative freedom, at least enough to benefit from their innovation and hard work. In China it would just be taken from you, so what's the point? |
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And that's still the case, all their technology is stolen. They've adopted a fascist form of capitalism, but innovation isn't in their cultural DNA at this point. Crazy inventor types that innovated and thought for themselves used to be a threat to the autocracy and have been culled out of the herd for hundreds of generations. |
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Which is fine, I don't care about other countries, I just don't want them negatively affecting our drive to innovate and bring mankind into a better future. |
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[+] Planetary gear between the wheel and the axle. You don't grab the wheel itself. |
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Pull-back toy car technology with a wheelie-bar in the back to prevent catastrophes and some good brakes. |
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I keep reading this as "goat-head" |
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I keep misreading this as godhead. |
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//You hit on the main difference between Chinese and Western culture with regards to technological innovation and it needs to be discussed.// |
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Agreed.
Not just discussed, but enforced.
I used to butt heads with [MB] over this issue. Ever wonder why innovation in the UK and surrounding countries foundered while other countries surged ahead as it pertains to innovation? |
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There is no case in point as England is a monarchy but they removed 'first-to-invent', (meaning the first person to publicly disclose an original invention is the only person with rights to the IP), and replaced it with 'first-to-file', (whomever can afford to file first, with a one year grace period after public disclosure to file or it becomes public-domain).
North American constitutions were then very strictly worded around invention to prevent it from happening here. |
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In 1995 Canada unconstitutionally replaced 'FTI' with 'FTF' without telling anybody or so much a a by your leave. The dragonfly ornithopter I conceived of and built was sold to acompany in China called Wowwee by the patent search company I had hired, (who were informed of the change I was unaware of), because all they had to do was string me along for a year. It was Time magazine's invention of the year for 2007 and Wowwee's flagship product. They now make Robosapian and a bunch of other stuff. |
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Then Obama unconstitutionally changed 'FTI' to 'FTF' in 2004.
That year it took me a year and a half of my very limited free time to build a working prototype of something quite incredible, while working with a university mechanical engineering department and a marine company interested but wanting to see proof of concept, but violated my own patent application in the U.S.... BECAUSE I can prove all prior art on the planet belongs to me and didn't file within a year of the illegal change to their constitution... I'm just lucky that way. |
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NO society currently retains first-to-invent and until it is reclaimed we are doomed as a species. |
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Hey Elon!
You frequent this site? |
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Wanna undo some governmental fuckery with me?
I don't know for sure that I'll raise enough wealth to hire the suits its going to take before I die. |
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Give me a shout. I've saved every document along the way including registered mail from a notary public I've never opened. I think we got a case and it would be good to strike while the iron is hot... |
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Damn bro! That's amazing! |
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And glad to see somebody else zeroing in on this virus attacking progress itself. Progress comes from people who stand to get something from it. Take that away, technology stagnates. |
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I too have had products I invented made overseas, in China and Vietnam specifically. I recently checked to see where I could get them made in China again and the guy sent me a picture of the product. Either he got them made in 24 hours, cast the iron, made the molds, neoprene coated them and had them printed on or they're already selling them. Which is obviously the case. |
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That's okay, I've never gotten a patent for any country but the US but I'm assuming if I had a patent in China and tried to challenge somebody there they'd say "What are you going to do about it? You have a patent? Aww, that's cute." |
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Intellectual property is a trip. I've done well and not so well protecting various properties, physically tangible and otherwise. I've always said there's a satisfaction factor to money. If it's from something you created and had fun with, a buck is worth a thousand times one that you made doing the corporate thing. |
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So far all I've done is make lots of other people lots of money learning about twenty or so ways not to do so. Yeah, lawyers get glazed eyes when you mention China. |
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This will change. That's the thing about invention, it can be applied to any given situation if not allowed its own bent. |
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In reply to [pocmloc]'s anno (haven't read the rest yet): |
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So the sick people in the ward push back a bit and then go flying forward. Sounds fun, but I'm seriously being practical. Or trying to be. (I'm not even sure what that means.) |
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Anyway, the wounded people will say thank you to us for inventing this, and I don't want one cent for it. If it's simple enough and cheap enough, the army will pay for it. Hopefully, I won't someday need such a thing, but chances are I may. |
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Sorry for being a pseudo communist on this kind of a topic. |
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Maybe a belt that connects the top of the wheel to your shoe, and works like the lever of the old choo choo trains. |
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Given that your feet are already pretty close to the floor, any mechanism will need to be more "beside" than "under" the feet.
I'm thinking that it could use the "re-set" to do the propelling: a simple swinging telescopic pole, with the foot-rest on it & pivoted above the knee. It is retracted (clear of the floor) as you push forward, then extends (simple cam mech) to the floor as it moves back to "normal" (whether weighted or sprung to do so) in contact with the floor. Rinse & repeat. |
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Different disabilities require different inputs.
The only way to go is with flywheel storage of energy.
This has two functions; one is storage of power, and the other is gyroscopic stability. |
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That's all I'm giving you. Just think of those two things together and you'll get the rest of the way. |
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I like to keep it simple, the tank treads could be pushed down to contact the ground just by the weight of the feet on them. Then steer by pushing the left or right. |
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some variation on the string drive? (link) |
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