**6. Conclusion**

A study was done on the wheelchairs currently on the market as the basis to assess the extent to which existing mechanisms address the needs of the users. Some effort was made to gather relevant information from physically challenged wheelchair users, physiotherapists, doctors and wheelchair equipment supplying companies to establish areas of possible improvement with regards to ergonomic aspects of the wheelchair. Hydraulic linear actuator lift and recliner design concept was found to be the optimal design solution, and it was developed to come up with wheelchair characteristics, specifications, control systems and choice of construction materials. Engineering analysis and simulation were carried out to confirm the feasibility of the design. Also recommendations for future work were made on the areas that were not perfected by the design of this project, such as the need for voice input commands in the control of the wheelchair.

#### **Acknowledgements**

We would like to thank the Baines Avenue Clinic staff for allowing the researchers to interact with wheel chairs users and for the insight into health requirement for users. The Baines Physio Clinic gave us a detailed preview of how the wheel chair could contribute to the patient's physical wellbeing. Also the team from Wheelchairs Zimbabwe Company allowed us to appreciate the current wheel chair trends on the market and customer preferences.

#### **Author details**

Ignatio Madanhire\*, Tawanda Mushiri and Panganai Musariri University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe

\*Address all correspondence to: imadanhire@gmail.com

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Development of an Intelligent Standing Wheelchair with Reclining Characteristics DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96110*
