Figure 3
Five-wheeled wheelchair proposed since before. It is composed by a manual wheelchair, a linear actuator and an active-caster drive system. It can be attached at the back of a manual wheelchair even when the user sits in it. By stretching and shrinking motion of the linear actuator, a road distribution of each wheel can be changed. Because of the active-caster, the proposed wheelchair can have independently controlled motions in 2DOF, namely translational motion and pivot turn motion, in spite of the single-wheel drive system.