IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2016 - 12

QOLO Technology Changes
Life for Wheelchair Users
By Kenji Suzuki

uality of Life Through Locomotion (QOLO) is a technology for personal mobility
designed to support wheelchair-based locomotion. It can assist
users' voluntary postural changing-sitting to standing and vice versa-by using
only a passive mechanism and, therefore,
facilitates convenient transferring from
the wheelchair into a bed, toilet, tub, or
regular chair (Figure 1). With the vision
of mobility for everyone, we designed
QOLO to dramatically enhance selfmotivated activities and social interaction
for people with reduced mobility due to
lower-body paralysis.
With QOLO, we mainly focus on
youths with spinal cord injuries (SCIs),
who often struggle to carry out the activities of daily life independently. Many
of those struggles are due to
the limitations
Posture transition
of typical domestic environfacilitated by QOLO
ments, which
provides the choice to have usually
been designed
stay seated or upright
for healthy peoduring locomotion.
ple. These environments do
not always have
ramps or elevators to support wheelchairs, the corridors are relatively narrow, and the
shelves are too high, often at (standing)
eye level or even higher. Therefore, it is
difficult to carry out daily activities without needing to depend on others. Posture transition facilitated by QOLO

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2015.2511684
Date of publication: 8 March 2016

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

(a)

(b)

Figure 1. QOLO technology: (a) a standing mobility vehicle and (b) a step-climbing
wheelchair with a passive mechanism for postural changing.

provides the choice to stay seated or upright during locomotion, so individuals
can have a conversation during a walk
while maintaining eye contact. This will
dramatically expand the working environment, promote independent living,
and increase opportunities to enjoy a
regular life.
QOLO is the result of a fusion of two
research studies, posture transition for
hands-free upright locomotion and a
hand-powered step-climbing wheelchair. It focuses on passive operation for
both posture transition and step climbing, which is cheaper, lighter, water
resistant, and easy to attach. In terms of
the technology, passive operation realized through gas springs and a linkage
system enables easy fitting into existing
self-powered or electrical wheelchairs
and saves all the power available for
locomotion. The whole system was
designed considering human biomechanics to maximize both stability and
efficiency. Due to the numerous subjective characteristics associated with

march 2016

designs of this nature, the development
of QOLO was carried out the with the
collaboration of the Tsukuba University
Hospital while conducting successful
tests with SCI patients, so the technology can easily be adjusted with a minimum amount of modifications to easily
fit different users.
More than 1 million people in Japan
have ambulatory disabilities due to traffic accidents, and the vast majority of
them are aged around 40, which is the
prime of their lives. In the United
States, the number of people suffering
from SCIs is estimated to be over
270,000, and more than 11,000 new
injuries are added to the list annually.
Furthermore, 5.3% of the working-age
population is considered to have ambulatory disabilities and forced to depend
on others instead of positively contributing to the GDP. We want QOLO to
free them from the limitations of their
wheelchairs, help them contribute both
socially and economically, and make
them feel valuable.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2016