From Danish designer Ulrik Svenningsen comes the X30 manual wheelchair.

This wheelchair was especially designed to combat some of life’s punishment for being a wheelchair user. What are they? Shoulder and upper extremity injuries caused by the un-natural motion of pushing a conventional manual wheelchair. And, even more upper extremity injuries caused by the need to transfer in and out of a wheelchair using arms only. Try it sometime!

How did he do it? Take a closer look at the image. The push cranks, not push rims, are tucked in tight and inline with the user’s shoulders. In conventional configurations the wheelchair user must reach outward, back, and push forward and down placing a good deal of strain on shoulders. The cranks used to propel the chair also offer a significantly more shoulder friendly motion than the bizarre shoulder gyrations used in conventional rim pushing.

The wheels appear to be placed in a forward position placing the axle closer to the anatomical hip joint instead of somewhere behind it for better balance and performance.

To lighten the load on the old arms when transferring, the designer has cambered the wheels in under the wheelchair seat. That means that there is less distance to go for the transfer and less demand on the old uppers.

Designer Ulrik Svenningsen gets a well done for this one. Not only for hitting the mark for aesthetics but also for incorporating some real world solutions into the X30 wheelchair.

I know, when and where can you check one out? Don’t know, there is no release date as yet for this wheelchair.