We’ve seen Lego being used in some odd and ingenious ways recently — from jet engines consisting of 150,000 Lego bricks to using the traditional toys as building blocks for artificial limbs.
Now, a protoype design uses Lego to make traveling around in a wheelchair a little more fun, and ramps up decoration beyond stickers or a funky color. Built by Simon “Burf” Burfield, the Lego wheelchair weighs 44 pounds — lightweight compared to standard designs — and can carry a person of up to 90kgs (198 pounds).
Apart from using a ‘whole load’ of Lego bricks, the wheelchair consists of six Mindstorms NXTs, 12 Mindstorms motors, 12 Mindstorms touch sensors, and 12 Rotacaster multi-directional wheels.
At the moment, the wheelchair is controlled via a four-direction joystick, but Burfield hopes that in the future it can be linked to a mobile device via Bluetooth and controlled through an app in the future.
Granted, it doesn’t move all that quickly, but as the video below shows his wife taking the prototype — version 8 — out for a test drive, it’s still pretty impressive.
(via Burf)
