Page 28 - Mobility Management, November 2017

4Front: Making Consumer Choice a Powerful Priority
In an age when consumers demand robust function- ality from their technology — remember when a cell phone was just for making calls? — it should come as
no surprise that consumers also demand a wider range of choices in their power wheelchairs.
For some users, that means the obstacle climbing and maneuverability of front-wheel drive. And now Quantum Rehab has its own answer: the new 4Front.
Not Simply a FWD Chair
The 4Front is Quantum Rehab’s front-wheel-drive debut, and Quantum VP Jay Brislin, MSPT, indicated that the company didn’t want to simply imitate what was on
the market.
“What we were missing was front-wheel drive,” he said. “There weren’t a lot of existing options from a front-wheel- drive perspective for clients, so over several years, we’ve been looking to develop a front-wheel-drive chair. But we didn’t want a me-too product.”
The world, Brislin pointed out, doesn’t need just another power chair. “It needs something better, some- thing that’s going to further enhance somebody’s life,
to allow somebody to seamlessly transition through
their environment. How can we make somebody’s daily interactions and activities just a little bit easier, a little less stressful, a little less fatiguing?”
Among Quantum’s engineering goals, Brislin said: maneuverability, a smooth ride, and an unmatched driving experience.
Front-Wheel-Drive Advantages
As a configuration, front-wheel drive can have several advantages over mid- and rear-wheel drive.
“Your drive tires are the first things that are coming up and approaching the obstacle or whatever it is you’re driving over,” Brislin explained of front-wheel drive. “That power right up front, to pull you up and through things, is definitely a reason to use front-wheel drive. It does have tight cornering, especially when you’re making turns in tight areas. By not having front swiveling casters, you have a lot of room up front to better position the client’s legs.”
But Brislin and his team wanted their first front- wheel-drive offering to provide more than those traditional benefits. Explaining that Quantum wanted to design a highly responsive chair, Brislin addressed a well-known front-wheel-drive tendency — fishtailing at higher speeds.
“One of the issues you see with front-wheel-drive chairs is once you go past 5 mph, the chair can tend to flutter because that drive tire is up front and pulling everything from the rear,” Brislin said. “We wanted to go to 6 mph standard, which we did‚ and we used what we’re calling CASE technology, which stands for Caster Angle Sensor Encoder.”
Brislin described CASE technology as “controlling the stability of the chair when you’re turning, so if you’re driving at high speeds or going over uneven terrain, this aids in the driveability and keeps your casters moving
in the correct direction. That’s going to allow for better performance, much better responsiveness and allows the chair to track even straighter, especially when you’re
26 NOVEMBER 2017 | MOBILITY MANAGEMENT
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