MONTHLY NEWS
June 1998

Kyoto Siblings Win Wheelchair Design Prize

A brother and sister attending an elementary school in Kyoto won a special prize in a recent wheelchair design contest. They became the youngest winners in the event, launched in 1989.

Shoichi Mizutani, a sixth grader at the elementary school affiliated with the Kyoto University of Education, and his younger sister Kumi, a fifth grader going to the same school, designed a wheelchair that uses continuous roller belts like a bulldozer instead of normal wheels.

In creating Sa Iku Car (let's go car), the two spent nearly a month poring over wheelchair catalogs they collected at a hospital. They sometimes disagreed on an idea and got into fights.

What inspired the two to keep going was the experience they went through when their father broke his right knee in a car accident and spent nearly six months in a wheelchair.

Shoichi and Kumi frequently helped push him around when he went out for a walk or went shopping.

They learned that a lot of obstacles have to be overcome with conventional wheelchairs. One of the most difficult things was clearing steps. They also found it was dangerous to move around in the rain because roads became slippery.

Shoichi knew there had to be an easier way to get around and decided to create a design himself when he learned about the contest.

The big breakthrough came when Shoichi saw a bulldozer in a nearby park. In talking with one of the construction workers, he learned that bulldozers are capable of moving around over uneven terrain.

Shoichi and Kumi then came up with a design that replaced conventional wheels with roller belts. They also covered the surface of the belts with inflated tubes to prevent damage to floors. The seat tilts so that it remains level even when their chair is going over a bump.

Shoichi redrew the design more than ten times before it was completed, and Kumi colored the final version.

The design was accompanied by a message from Shoichi: "What's important is for us, as healthy people, to be willing to help out those who are physically handicapped."

Photos: (Top) Shoichi and Kumi drew their wheelchair design as viewed from the front, side, and back (Yoshitaka Mizutani); (above) a proud father with his children, who show off their prize-winning design (Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun).