pushingthelimits.com

We need to invade Germany again, seriously. It’s obvious that they are planning to overtake the world via advanced engineering and a few battalions of wheelchair warriors carried across the battlefield by all-terrain, electric hybrid wheelchairs armed with lasers.

OK we made the lasers part up, but it we wouldn’t put it past those fun loving Germans to add it as an optional extra to the Superfourin Hybrid Wheelchair.

The Superfourin (great design, not so great name) is the work of  German design and consultaion firm Fraunhofer who wanted to explore the possibilities of of an all terrain vehicle for people with limited mobility.

The result is a drool inducing beast capable of tackling 40 degree slopes easily (probably while eating bratwurst and sauerkraut), fitted with a roll cage and hi tech gps equipment to monitor the user and vehicle.

“For the physically disabled, the new technology means not only independence, but security. The vehicle is equipped with a GPS system that continuously transmits its position to a control center, where a digital map shows its exact location. A display provides up-to-date technical information such as the fuel and battery levels, incline of the axles and the two or four-wheel drive setting. Vital parameters such as pulse rate and blood oxygen content can also be superimposed on the display. In emergency situations such as when the wheels are locked, the wheelchair flips over or if the patient’s pulse suddenly begins to race, the system automatically sends out an alarm. “The system is even designed to enable individual drivers to monitor an entire fleet of wheelchairs,” explains Dr. Andreas Wenzel of the IITB. “The technology creates the basis for offering new services such as a Superfourin rental service,” adds Wernstedt. “This opens up a new market targeted towards the physically disabled and their families. With its versatility, the all-terrain wheelchair can drive over snow-covered mountains, mud flats and sand dunes.”

The thought of being able to hire one of these things for a day has us thinking of a situation where alarms begin to ring back in the control center due to a rapid pulse, doctors and rescue teams would race to our location only to find us grinning and shouting something like “Dude, you missed it, I just caught the biggest air ever”.

The superfourin was announced back in 2006 to much excitement but unfourtunately nothing more has been seen of it and either it never made it out of the concept stage, or the development team are simply having too much fun with the prototype to bother with anything like mass production.


Fraunhofer