Patent Application
20150182394
This invention relates generally to wheeled personal conveyances (such as wheelchairs and rollators).
Wheeled personal conveyances such as wheelchairs are typically designed to transport a sitting person. So-called companion chairs are a lighter-duty mechanism having a similar operating purpose. Accordingly, both wheelchairs and companion chairs typically have leg riggings to support the transportee's lower appendages above the ground. Rollators are often viewed as a walking aid and hence often, though not always, lack such leg riggings. Nevertheless, like wheelchairs and companion chairs, many rollators include a seat. For convenience, as used herein the expressions “wheeled personal conveyance” and “rollator” will be understood to include all such conveyance mechanisms.
Many wheeled personal conveyances are designed presuming ownership and usage by a single user. Such wheeled personal conveyances are therefore sometimes designed to fold up to thereby facilitate storage (for example, in a vehicular trunk) and transport to a different place of use. Other wheeled personal conveyances are designed presuming shared stitutional use by a larger population of users. For example, medical services facilities (such as hospitals, medical clinics, outpatient facilities, and doctor's offices), rehabilitative and extended-care facilities (such as nursing homes and assisted-care facilities), and transportation hubs (such as airports) often have a number of wheeled personal conveyances available on site to transport visitors on an as-needed basis.
Use of institutionally-deployed wheeled personal conveyances can be sporadic. As a result, some or even most of the wheeled personal conveyances at a given institutional facility may be presently unused at any given time. In many cases, many of these unused wheeled personal conveyances are stored together at a staging area (such as in a foyer near an entrance to the facility) or in a storage area (such as a storage closet or room). To save space, it is known to nest one rollator within another in the same manner that grocery carts are typically nested one within the other; i.e., by nesting the rearward rollator within the forward rollator through the back of the forward rollator. Though suitable for at least some purposes such an approach does not necessarily meet all needs of all application settings and/or all users.
The above needs are at least partially met through provision of the nesting wheeled personal conveyance described in the following detailed description, particularly when studied in conjunction with the drawings, wherein:
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity. That said, these illustrations are drawn to scale. Common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment, however, may not be depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.
Generally speaking, pursuant to these various embodiments, a wheeled personal conveyance has a rear portion and a front portion, the front portion being configured to receive into the wheeled personal conveyance the rear portion of a like wheeled personal conveyance such that the like wheeled personal conveyance is at least partially nested within the wheeled personal conveyance. By one approach this wheeled personal conveyance includes four conveyance-supporting, ground-contacting wheels and comprises a rollator.
By one approach, a body frame as comprises the wheeled personal conveyance has a front portion that is laterally wider than a part of the body frame that comprises a part of the aforementioned rear portion of the wheeled personal conveyance. So configured, the wheeled personal conveyance can have a passenger area that is wider towards the front than towards the back.
Such a configuration can often better accommodate many passengers. In particular, having a wider front can ease seating and unseating passengers having any number of body shapes and sizes. This wider front can also provide the passenger with additional room to adjust their legs, and in particular the relative distance between their knees, while seated. Such a capability can, in turn, greatly facilitate comfort and safety for the passenger both in the short term and in the longer term.
By one approach the seat of the wheeled personal conveyance pivots with respect to the body frame between a deployed, horizontal position and a non-deployed, non-horizontal position. So configured, pivoting the seat into a non-deployed position can help facilitate the aforementioned nesting of one wheeled personal conveyance into another.
If desired, the wheeled personal conveyance can also include arm rests. By one approach these arm rests also pivotally connect with respect to the body. So configured, the arm rests are also pivotal between deployed and non-deployed positions. Pivoting the arm rests to the non-deployed position can also help to facilitate nesting one wheeled personal conveyance into another. By another approach the arm rests are attached to the pivoting seat and hence pivot in conjunction with the seat. If desired the arm rests can be configured to selectively vary their height with respect to the seat.
These teachings are highly flexible in practice and will accommodate a wide variety of variations. For example, by one approach the wheeled personal conveyance can further comprise an oxygen bottle rack that operably couples to the body frame beneath the seat. To facilitate the aforementioned nesting capability the oxygen bottle rack can be pitched downwardly (back to front). By another approach the wheeled personal conveyance can include an IV pole.
So configured, the wheeled personal conveyance can be readily nested with one or more other wheeled personal conveyances to thereby reduce storage space requirements. By receiving the rear portion of another wheeled personal conveyance into the front portion of the wheeled personal conveyance, however, this nesting capability comes without the cost of impinging upon available lateral space in the forward portion of the wheeled personal conveyance. Instead, the wider resultant width at the front of the wheeled personal conveyance can make it easier for the passenger to properly, comfortably, and safely become seated in the wheeled personal conveyance. That wider width can also provide the seated passenger with space and opportunity to adjust the lateral position of their legs to thereby achieve greater comfort while seated. These teachings are also economically practiced and highly intuitive to employ with essentially little or no training.
These and other benefits may become clearer upon making a thorough review and study of the following detailed description. Referring now to the drawings, and in particular to
In this illustrative example the wheeled personal conveyance 100 has a rear portion 101 and a front portion 102. Generally speaking, the front portion 102 is configured to receive into the wheeled personal conveyance 100 the rear portion 101 of a like wheeled personal conveyance (not shown in these figures but presented further herein). So configured, the like wheeled personal conveyance is at least partially nested within the wheeled personal conveyance 100.
The wheeled personal conveyance 100 includes a body frame 103 to support and interconnect various components. This body frame 103 can be comprised in whole or in part of any of a variety of appropriate materials including a variety of metals (including aluminum and aluminum alloys), plastics, carbon fiber reinforced materials, and so forth. For many application settings it will serve well for at least portions of the body frame 103 to comprise hollow tubes having circular, oval, or rectangular cross sections (or other cross sectional shapes of choice). In this illustrative example a part of the body frame 103 that comprises a part of the front portion 102 of the wheeled personal conveyance 100 is laterally wider than a part of the body frame 103 that comprises a part of the rear portion 101 of the wheeled personal conveyance 100.
In this example the body frame 103 includes a pair of legs on either side thereof. Referring to the right side of the body frame 103 (as viewed in
The front leg 104 and rear leg 105 on each side of the body frame 103 are connected to one another at their lower ends by a support member 106. The rear portion 107 of this support member 106 extends outwardly and rearwardly of the aforementioned body frame 103 in this illustrative example and, more particularly, angles downwardly as well. A small wheel 108 is attached at the far end of this rear portion 107. As perhaps best shown in
Referring again to
The rear two wheels 110 in turn rotate around a fixed-position horizontal axis. In this illustrative example the rear wheels are considerably larger in diameter than the front two wheels. These rear wheels can, however, be smaller than the front wheels, the same size as the front wheels, or larger than the front wheels as desired. It would also be possible to configure these rear wheels using a caster arrangement if desired. In this particular example the rear wheels are located in-board of the support member 106 but other configurations are possible. The rear wheels could be located out-board of the support member 106, for example, or could even be located within a corresponding cavity in and through the support member 106 if desired (akin, for example, to a wheel disposed between a fork).
The wheeled personal conveyance 100 also includes a seat 111 that operably couples to the body frame 103. Seats are well known in the art and it will be understood that this seat 111 can be as contoured or as featureless as desired and can be comprised of any of a wide variety of materials. As the present teachings are not particularly sensitive to any particular choices in these regards, for the sake of brevity further elaboration regarding seat details is not provided here save to note that the seat 111 can be pivotally connected with respect to the body frame 103 (for example, to thereby allow the seat 111 to be selectively pivoted up and back to a non-deployed position that is substantially vertical as illustrated in
In this example there is no support beam or other member disposed between the opposing sides of the body frame 103 proximal the front edge of the seat 111. Accordingly, when the seat 111 is pivoted upwardly and back from a horizontal, deployed position towards a non-horizontal, non-deployed position as shown in
In this illustrative example the wheeled personal conveyance 100 also includes a seat back 112 that also operably couples to the body frame 103 and a head rest 113 that connects to the seat back 112. By one approach the head rest 113 can be readily separable from the remainder of the apparatus in order to facilitate shipping and/or limited long-term storage resources.
As with the seat 111 the seat back 112 and head rest 113 can be formed using any of a variety of materials and can assume any of a wide variety of form factors. In the illustrated example the seat back 112 has a fixed position with respect to the body frame 103 and cannot be moved relative to the body frame 103 during ordinary use. (These teachings will accommodate permitting the seat back 112 to be removed from the body frame 103 during maintenance or repair.) These teachings will also accommodate, if desired, permitting the head rest 113 to pivot and/or extend with respect to the seat back 112 to thereby provide some opportunity to the user to adjust the relative position of the head rest 113 with respect to the seat back 112 to achieve a particular custom or otherwise-desired configuration.
The wheeled personal conveyance 100 also includes a pair of arms 114 that extend upwardly at the rear of the body frame 103 to thereby provide support for the backside of the seat back 112 and to provide a footing for a pushbar 115 that extends laterally across the backside of the wheeled personal conveyance 100 proximal (in this example) the aforementioned head rest 113. This pushbar 115 provides a convenient interface by which an attendant can grasp and hold the wheeled personal conveyance 100 in a stationary location and/or push or pull the wheeled personal conveyance 100 in a desired direction to thereby move a person who is seated in the wheeled personal conveyance 100.
By one approach, and as illustrated, the wheeled personal conveyance 100 can also include a pair of arm rests 116 that operably couple on opposing sides of the body frame 103. By one approach these arm rests 116 are pivotally coupled to the body frame 103 and hence are able, for example, to pivot upwardly and towards the rear portion 101 of the wheeled personal conveyance 100 as illustrated in
If desired, the above-described seating area can be further equipped with a seatbelt. Seatbelts of various kinds are well known in the art and require no further description here.
In this illustrative example the wheeled personal conveyance 100 also includes an oxygen bottle rack 118 disposed beneath the seat 111. This oxygen bottle rack 118 comprises a set of spaced rods that are secured at the rear portion 101 of the wheeled personal conveyance 100 by a rod 119 that extends laterally between the two rear legs 105 of the body frame 103. In this example the oxygen bottle rack 118 receives further support from two lateral struts 120 that extend inwardly from the aforementioned support members 106. When the above-described components comprise rigid materials the oxygen bottle rack 118 will comprise a fixed-position component that is stationary relative the body frame 103 and hence does not move relative to the body frame 103. In this example the oxygen bottle rank 118 includes a shaped and contoured area to receive, conformally, an oxygen bottle (not shown). A securement mechanism 117 of choice can serve to secure the oxygen bottle in place.
In this example the oxygen bottle rack 118 is pitched downwardly, from the back to the front of the wheeled personal conveyance 100. See, in particular,
In this example, all of the wheels for both wheeled personal conveyances remain in contact with the ground when the wheeled personal conveyances are nested one within the other. These teachings will accommodate other approaches in these regards if desired, however.
The degree to which such nesting can occur can vary as desired. The illustrated example achieves around a fifty percent nesting ratio. Such nesting, of course, helps to conserve floor space requirements when storing such wheeled personal conveyances for either short term or long term purposes.
The described configuration provides more than merely the ability to support nesting, however. Being configured as described, the front portion of the wheeled personal conveyance is wider relative to the rear portion. As a result, a person sitting in the wheeled personal conveyance has more lateral room for their legs than one might ordinarily expect. This additional room offers greater ease when seating oneself. This additional room also offers greater comfort to a seated person because that person now has more room to move their legs laterally. This added legroom (as compared to prior art approaches) is achieved without necessarily widening the overall apparatus as compared to prior art wheeled personal conveyances.
Those skilled in the art will recognize that a wide variety of modifications, alterations, and combinations can be made with respect to the above described embodiments without departing from the scope of the invention.
Referring in particular to
With continued reference to these particular figures, in this example the wheeled personal conveyance 100 also includes a pair of foot rests 802 that each attach to a respective front leg 104 of the wheeled personal conveyance 100. These foot rests 802 attach to their respective front leg 104 using any of a variety of hinged, pivoted, and or otherwise articulated joints to thereby permit the foot rests 802 to be deployed or otherwise positioned as desired for the convenience of the user and/or to prevent the foot rests 802 from blocking the aforementioned nesting capability of these wheeled personal conveyances 100.
While the body frame 103 remains wider at the front than towards the rear in this example, the seat 111 is essentially rectangularly shaped. With the seat 111 pivoted upwardly (as shown in
With continued reference to these figures, but with particular attention to
So configured the armrests 116 can be located at a convenient height for the user of the wheeled personal conveyance 100. Also, and as shown in
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional application No. 61/922,237, filed Dec. 31, 2013, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety herein.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61922237 | Dec 2013 | US |
