Shock-Absorbing Bike Wheel for Wheelchairs

Apr 8, 2015
Entrepreneurs love to claim they’re “reinventing the wheel.” So what do you say when you’ve actually reinvented the wheel? “I love spokes, I’ve just come up with something different,” explains Sam Pearce, a British designer who, if you haven’t guessed already, created a spoke-less, shock-absorbing wheel that’s being used on wheelchairs and bicycles. Loopwheels, as its called, was recently shortlisted for the London Design Museum’s Design of the Year award. When we first covered the product in 2013, cycling enthusiasts gave it a ringing endorsement, saying they were “immediately impressed at the ride quality.” Since then, Loopwheels has expanded from bikes to wheelchairs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7C43kTkVQc

Loopwheels first debuted on bikes—mountain bikes are next—before a wheelchair manufacturer caught wind of the new wheels and started sourcing them from Pearce. “We say it’s triple-smooth,” Pearce says. The suspension in the wheels smooths out any traveling over bumps, and “gets rid of all the road buzz.” That’s crucial to wheelchair users, whose bodies are in full contact with the vehicle, meaning they often absorb road shock right along with the chair. Equally important to users? Cost. Pearce says he more or less arrived at an ideal design two years ago, but has since worked on refining manufacturing techniques, in part by adopting processes from the auto industry, to get the price down from $2,000 a wheel, to a few hundred dollars (depending on the model). “There’s only so much people will pay for new technology,” Pearce says. That’s true for wheelchairs, and it’s true for mountain bikes, which Pearce says is next in line for Loopwheels.

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/clever-...w-wheelchairs/