Generally, we face certain difficulties while boarding on a common cycle rickshaw, which is often ignored. But a young industrial designer, Bharat J. makes himself involved in scrutiny and resolution of exactly those problems.
It is never overlooked that an elder person always struggles to get into a rickshaw and a physically challenged person needs additional help for boarding on it compared to just walking on stairs. The very reason behind these difficulties is the greater height of the pedestal in usual rickshaws. In the usual design the pedestal rests above the linear connection between the pulling pedal and the axis of rare wheel. So any effort of lowering the pedestal actually needs a change in other two as well. But in the usual design neither the pedal nor the axis can be lowered any further. This motivates the IIT-ian to redesign the cycle rickshaw. There are various potential designs that overcome this drawback, nevertheless introduce some more challenges.
While achieving a goal of easing ingress-egress for elderly and physically impaired, the design also intends to keep the overall weight of the vehicle, unchanged. And most importantly, the new design should demand no extra effort from the puller as well. The current designer also cares for the easy maintenance feature of his designed vehicle. The designer knows that apart from these primary requirements, there are some other technical issues to be taken care of. One of those is the visibility of the rickshaw puller. One plausible design where the passenger sits in front, facing away from puller, can have a pedestal quite low but the puller lacks visibility in this case. The designer analyzes another plausible design where the passenger’s seat is placed beside that of puller, instead of placing it behind. But unfortunately, it causes high turning radius of the vehicle. The weight distribution also becomes biased at one side which is an obvious drawback of such seating arrangement.
The final design avoids all such drawbacks and achieves the desired goal alongside. It’s got a footboard which is only 25cm higher from the ground that is as same as an ordinary stair case. This 67 Kg cycle rickshaw looks not much different from the usual one except some modification beneath the passenger’s seat of width 90 cm. To design this low floor rickshaw one extra small chain wheel is added beneath the level of pedestal. The chain runs under the foot board and reaches the rare axis via that extra wheel. From the rare wheel axis, it comes straight to pedal by running over the pedestal.
The newly designed low floor cycle rickshaw has some other novel features also. It includes a comfortable luggage carrier behind the vehicle and a space for puller’s toolbox below the passenger’s seat. In the second stage, the designer adds a 250 watt hub motor to the front wheel which would assist the puller. Again, a solar panel is attached on the shade roof as an alternative charging source.
via: coroflot
