Mehsana kids’ stair-climbing wheelchair wins

AHMEDABAD/MEHSANA: Two students of Anand Niketan School Mehsana campus bagged the top prize in CBSE National Science Competition 2017-18 with their innovative wheelchair which can climb the stairs.
They have named it ‘Saksham’ (Able). The student duo of Rohan Patel and Devdutt Patel was facilitated at the school on Thursday.
Another project that reached to the final rounds of the same competition from the same school was of biodegradable sanitary pads which were designed by Dhruv Patel and Rajvi Patel.The girls were also felicitated on the occasion.

Rohan and Devdutt said that they experienced the difficulties faced by the persons with disabilities when one of their friends could not climb stairs when he sustained fracture injuries. “The prototype is designed using rocker-bogie mechanism. It also helps the person on uneven terrains. It’s the same principle used in Mars Rover Sojourner by NASA,” said the duo.
The design consists of rigid elements connected through joints, facilitating degree of freedom for all six wheels.
Dhruvi and Rajvi, students of class IX, designed the pads with lower strata of the society in mind. The incinerator burns the biodegradable pad — made from fibres of banana stem skin — and the ash can be used for soil conditioning.
“It started as a science project but with help and guidance of teachers, we researched online, met experts and collected information on the need of such pads. The prototype was well-received which gave us hope for experiments,” said the duo. The project won at inter-school competitions after which it participated in regional rounds of CBSE Science Competition. The duo wants to take the project further by setting up a small scale unit.