Existing Products:-Can't find most of these for sale
A survey
was carried out on products available on the market for dealing with the same
problem that the current project objective will aim to solve. The following are
the products that are on offer:
Wheelchair Tyre
Covers: Price: €39 per pair
(http://www.newdisability.com)
- Wheelchair tyre covers shown above require the user to slip on a cover over their rear tyres on entering a building. They are not a competitor to the proposed design for the following reasons:
- They require an agile (upper body) wheelchair to put them on.
- The user must be inside the building before they are put on.
- They don’t clean the tyre; rather just cover it while the user is indoors.
- Front wheels are still unclean and unprotected from bringing dirt indoors
- They do not suit all wheelchair types i.e. motorised wheelchairs have much smaller rear wheels and so it is impossible for the user to use such a product.
NO-TRACS Wheelchair Tyre Cleaning Unit: Price: $3565
(http://www.no-tracs.com)
(http://www.no-tracs.com)
The
No-Tracs product shown above is effective in cleaning the wheelchairs tyres
however it has the following negative characteristics that the product being
developed in this project will overcome:
- Requires the use of an electricity source.
- Is only available to purchase in the United States.
- Is extremely expensive.
- To be effective there must be one installed outside every single building that a wheelchair user wishes to enter including friends’ houses, restaurants, bars etc. This is not realistic.
3R-Unimat: Price:
$3500 (http://www.aim.us.com/)
The
3R-Unimat shares the same negative characteristics of the No-Tracs system shown
previously. It has the added disadvantage of requiring installation into a
footpath or inside the main entrance of a building i.e. the ground requires
construction to allow installation of product.
Web search on forums
A
literary search was done with the hope of finding non-biased reviews of
existing products and to find other relevant information, to aid the ongoing
project.
The
competitor’s product: NO-TRACS was advertised
on a wheelchair users’ forum
(http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum)
and it summarised the features of the device and the price.
(see post on survey of
existing solutions)
Wheelchair
users commented on the advertisement as follows:
- “Only $3565 US! Imagine the towels and mats I could buy ...”
- “It's nice that somebody took the initiative to develop something like this, I know many a times I wished I had something like this, but the price is going to make for a pretty limited costumer base. I wish them the best though.”
- “At that price, it's probably intended for places like rehab hospitals... I know Mary Free Bed could have used one during the winter months with all the salt, sand, and snow on the sidewalks.”
- “Expensive! But a cool idea. I just saw an add for wheelchair slippers recently. Slipcover like things to cover your wheels inside to keep the floor clean. (I would think they would make wheeling hard, but would be handy in nasty weather, especially if just visiting, and not home.) Another one of those things that is a neat idea, but I wouldn’t buy.”
The
points above demonstrate that there is a need for a product to clean their
wheels, but in this case that the price is too high. The reference in pt.4 to
the wheelchair slippers
(see post on survey of existing solutions)
is positive in that it is somewhat an affordable
solution to the problem but it’s performance is unacceptable: “would make wheeling hard………………I wouldn’t
buy”.
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