Roaming Free, With The Super-Stable, Stand-Up “Wheelchair”

Inventor’s wife cried when she saw him use it for the first time

After almost two decades in a wheelchair, inventor and entrepreneur Dr Amit Goffer is standing on his own two feet again.

He has developed – and is about to start selling – UpnRide, a unique mobility device which gives users the freedom to sit, stand and travel in an upright position.

He says his wife cried when she first saw him using the device. He broke his neck driving an ATV (all-terrain vehicle) in 1997, losing the use of both legs and some movement in his arms.

UpnRide is like a super-stable version of the Segway, but with many added benefits, including the fact that it raises the user from sitting to a standing position, and back again, with no outside help.

No other device offers users the ability to safely navigate their way around any urban environment.

Dr Goffer, 63, has a PhD in electrical and computer engineering and founded Odin Medical, providing MRIs for brain surgeons, before his accident.

He went on to invent the “bionic” ReWalk, a wearable device that literally allows paraplegics to walk again.

It provides powered hip and knee motion for people with spinal cord injury, allowing them to stand upright, walk, turn, and climb up and down stairs.

But the ReWalk “robotic exoskeleton” was designed for people who still had upper-body function, despite losing the use of their legs.

Dr Goffer also has limited movement in his arms, so it wasn’t suitable for his own needs.

“I was in a deep hole, with no place to go any deeper. The only way was up. I couldn’t accept not continuing with my engineering work,” he says. So his next task was to develop a device that would address his own problems, and those of millions like him.

He designed the UpnRide, which he himself now uses. It has changed his life in many ways, and not just in terms of mobility.

“The physical side of an injury like mine is a great problem,” he says, “but the mental side can be an even greater problem, losing your dignity, losing the joy of life.”

He tells how he was applauded after giving a keynote address at the Royal Academy of Engineering, in London, and was then literally overlooked at the cocktail party that followed, because he was in a wheelchair, below eye level.

“I was sitting in a wheelchair and everyone else was standing and they didn’t know what to do with me,” he says.

He also tells how an impatient Israeli woman once grabbed the handles of his wheelchair as he waited for an elevator, pulled him out of the way and pushed ahead of him.

The UpnRide is, he says, the answer to both physical and mental problems. It allows him to engage with other people in a dignified way, and meant he could visit the Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem, for the first time since his accident.

What makes UpnRide unlike any other mobility device is its patented auto-balancing gyroscope mechanism.

“Other devices have standing functions, which means that the user sits in the wheelchair and can stand up by pressing buttons,” says Oren Tamari, CEO at the startup UpnRide, based at Yokneam, central Israel.

“But none of them allow a person to travel in standing position, which is critical. We are the first and only wheelchair that allows full mobility in a standing position. And we are the first and only FDA approved wheelchair that allows mobility in standing position.”

Search the internet and you’ll find companies that appear to offer a standing travel function. For example, Permobil, based in Sweden, sells a standing wheelchair that can move, but comes with a safety warning that users could tip over anything but a level floor at the lowest speed.

By contrast, the sophisticated technology that powers UpnRide allows the user to travel upright at 4km per hour, over slopes and bumps, grass and gravel, and tackle pretty much any urban environment.

“If you look at the Segway, for example, it auto-balances on only one axis,” says Tamari. “So if there is a side slope, they tip over. We know from Segway users that this happens, they tip over to the side. Our mechanism auto balances 360 degrees, it doesn’t matter what is the slope. The user is always vertical to Earth.”

The UpnRide incorporates some of the technology from ReWalk, so that the user can stand for prolonged periods without feeling uncomfortable.

Standing has significant health benefits, says Tamari. He speaks of “the sitting disease” now widely recognized by medics. “Sitting down for long periods is very bad, physically and psychologically,” he says.

“When we sit too much it affects our blood circulation, cholesterol goes up, blood sugar goes up, we lose bone density, it even causes constipation.

“The wheelchair-user community are more depressed than the general population. They have much less self-esteem, they exclude themselves from the society because they feel ashamed of being an adult, but the height of a child, and often they don’t go to work again.

“Amit’s mission was to get all these people up and allow them to be mobile in standing position.”

The UpnRide is, after something of a Covid delay, finally about to be marketed worldwide. So far there have been just a handful of sales, but the plan now is to sell hundreds next year and thousands in 2024.

The device costs $32,000 and future models will incorporate obstacle detection – to avoid potholes – improved wheels and an option to send automatic updates to the user’s doctor, saying how much time they’ve spent standing.

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