MEM’S: My Easy Moving System

Project Information

MEMS

Grant agreement ID: 761917

DOI

10.3030/761917

Project closed

EC signature date 27 January 2017

Start date 1 February 2017

End date 31 July 2017

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

O.L.C.I. ENGINEERING SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MEMS (MEM’S: My Easy Moving System)

Reporting period: 2017-02-01 to 2017-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In Europe more than 5 million wheelchairs are used, of which nearly 1 million are used by quadriplegics and paraplegics persons who need to use the car as a mean of personal mobility.

Today the solutions offered by the market to try to give these citizens a support are mainly two: devices to install on cars, single-user mini cars built around the wheelchair. The weakness of the first solution is the lack of industrial standardisation, which can require high installation and personalisation costs resulting in an average expenditure of Euro 30,000. Regarding the second solution, the level of safety of these mini-cars is lower compared to the serial production cars.

The goal of our project is to bring onto the market an innovative independent mobility solution that overcomes the limitations of the devices currently available. By using robotics-based technology, our solution will allow the disabled person to use his/her electric wheelchair as a driver's seat in his/her car, without any intervention or assistance required of third parties. Our solution has been designed as original equipment to be installed by carmakers.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The technical activity was focused on verifying the vehicle accessibility by the wheelchair, dimensioning properly the wheels in order to limit the overall dimension, testing the robotized arm. No critical situations came to light and the technical solution proved to be solid and efficient.

A deep analysis has been carried out to determine the potential market of our solution.

The conclusion of the patent research was that there are not patent documents that may restrict the freedom of implementation of the invention.

Different typologies of risks have been identified, analysed, ranked, and, for each of them, a mitigation measure has been proposed.

The business planning has allowed to define with precision all the economic elements involved in the project and the investments needed; the projections in terms of revenues and net-profit developed are highly positive.

All these results encourage us to continue the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Thanks to our invention disabled people can have a mobility solution, without compromise, at a third of the average expenditure needed today; the national health systems will have a potential saving, calculated in the case only our system is installed, of two-thirds of the current cost, amounting between 600 million Euro and 1.300 million Euro per year, while improving the quality and the level of performance.

Electric wheelchair for car