University of Hartford

Montefiore Medical Center

Devdas Shetty

Avital Fast

Moshe Raz

Giora Rothman

Claudio Campana

Henry Neault

Attachments for a manual wheelchair are provided for navigating a wheelchair over obstacles and uneven terrain, such as a typical curb on a street. The attachments provide for regulating the movement of the wheelchair as the wheelchair descends the curb and to prevent the wheelchair from flipping over during such movement. The attachments include a belt support frame, at least two rollers mounted on the belt support frame and a belt mounted around the at least two rollers. The belt support frame is adapted for mounting on the frame of the wheelchair such that as the wheelchair descends from the upper surface to the lower surface, the belt engages an edge of the upper surface and rolls around the at least two rollers slowing a descent of the wheelchair from the upper surface to the lower surface.

Wheelchair attachments

Attachments for a manual wheelchair are provided for navigating a wheelchair over obstacles and uneven terrain, such as a typical curb on a street. The attachments provide for regulating the movement of the wheelchair as the wheelchair descends the curb and to prevent the wheelchair from flipping over during such movement. The attachments include a front caster wheel slider assembly on each side of the wheelchair, a follower wheel assembly and a track belt damping bar. The front caster wheel slider assembly includes a piston that will quickly push the front caster wheels down after they roll over the top edge of the curb. The follower wheel assembly acts as a sensor that will release the piston in the assembly after the front caster wheels roll over the top edge of the curb. As the back wheels of the wheelchair roll over and down the curb, the track belt damping bar slows the descent of the wheelchair.

An ambulatory suspension system for gait rehabilitation has a parallel pair of rails bordering the sides of a training area and a bridge extending between and movable along the rails. A trolley is movable along the bridge and includes a motor driven hoist with a cable extending thereabout and depending from the trolley. The hoist is operable to vary the length of the cable depending from the trolley, and a harness is suspended by the cable. Motors move the bridge along the rails and the trolley along the bridge as the sensors sense the direction of movement of the patient in X and Y directions. The falling motion of a patient supported in the harness is sensed and will immediately disable the system. A computer control receives signals from the sensors and operates the motors so that the patient is held in an upright position.

Ambulatory suspension and rehabilitation apparatus

A non-contact visual system for analyzing surface roughness directs onto the surface of a workpiece a laser beam which is reflected from the surface with a diffraction pattern. The image of the reflected diffraction pattern is captured on a mirror and reflected onto a display screen, and this displayed image is converted into analog signals which, in turn, are converted into digital data. The intensity of the captured image is determined from the digital data, and the data on the determined intensity of the captured image are compared with data on intensity from calibrated standards of surface roughness. From this comparison, the surface roughness of the workpiece is determined. The preferred technique uses a rasterizing graphics adapter for converting the output of a video camera into the digital signals and only pixels above a predetermined brightness value are utilized.

Growing community of inventors

West Hartford, CT, United States of America

Devdas Shetty