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After it beat Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol by four games to one earlier this year, Google's AlphaGo has become the Go player to beat. Even while the series was still being played, 18-year-old Chinese Go champion Ke Jie remarked that he could beat Goo...
Up until now, the problem with wheelchair designs has been their one-size-fits all approach to patient needs. GO is an innovative wheelchair design that addresses this problem with the latest 3D printing technology. Like a fine pair of tailor-made shoes, GO is custom fitted to each user’s unique biometrics and functional preferences. No matter the individual’s body shape, weight, and disability, both the seat and foot-plate are independently sized to maximize comfort, flexibility and support. Better yet, as the user changes, so can the sections! A primary concern of users was the strain in self-propelling. To address this, the GO wheelchair has super tactile push rims with a surface designed to lock into the included GO wheelchair glove system that delivers greater power-to-push ratio. This unique system – the first of its kind – decreases the risk of injury and painful conditions common to wheelchair users, such as arthritis in the shoulders.
Designer: Layer Design
GO wheelchair from Benjamin Hubert on Vimeo.
3D printing has really changed the way the medical industry functions. One shoe definitely doesn’t fit all, and 3D printing ensures that each patient gets a tailor-made medical solution. The latest medical device to jump aboard the 3D printing express, is the wheelchair. ‘Go’ by Layer Design in collaboration with Materialise is the result of a two year long endeavour to build a wheelchair that pushes the boundaries of medical functionality as well as design. The chair’s design is alterable based on the user’s biometric information, but it isn’t just that. The chair also lends itself to further customization based on user preferences.
The designers claim that the entire chair can be made ready within 2 weeks, which is a whole lot faster than the usual 6-8 week wait for the custom made wheelchairs in today’s market. Not to mention, the Go also boasts of a pretty high style quotient!
Designers: Layer Design & Materialise.
