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Folding wheelchair

With increasing advances of social welfare and people's living standards, more and more disabled people use rehabilitative wheelchairs. They offer great conveniences to the indoor and outdoor activities of the disabled people, and improve life quality of the disabled people. Wheelchairs are typically relatively small, single-person conveyances that generally comprise a seat supported by a frame which, in turn, is supported by two opposed drive wheels and two front casters. The marketplace for powered wheelchairs is increasingly populated. While it functions well as a powered wheelchair, it becomes very burdensome to transport from one venue to another. Hence, there is a need for a wheelchair that is light weight and nimble, and whose light weight enables smaller motors and smaller batteries to perform equally as well as its heavy counterparts, resulting in a truly portable mobility aid that can be transported in a back seat floor or the trunk of a car, rather than a specialized van. Many manual wheelchairs are designed so that they can be folded for more convenient storage when not in use. Portable wheelchairs are becoming an increasingly popular alternative over the standard rigid models for wheelchair riders. The portable wheelchairs generally have a frame which folds or collapses for easy transportation, enabling a user to conveniently travel between various locations, such as from home to work, school, restaurants, the theater or any other site of interest. Typical folding mechanisms involve cross braces extending from an upper part of one side frame to a lower part of another side frame. Folding wheelchairs generally comprise a rigid frame with right and left closed frame members and a pair of large wheels rotatably mounted thereon by which the occupant can propel the chair. In foldable chairs, the right and left closed frame members are usually connected by two diagonally-extending cross-tubes which can be scissored together to fold the chair. Foldable wheelchairs are light in weight for improved maneuverability and handling. The frame is often formed from a tubular material, such as a lightweight, high-strength aircraft-grade aluminum tubing, to reduce the overall chair weight while providing the necessary strength. In efforts to further reduce the weight of the chair, the number of components comprising the chair frame has also been reduced. Folding wheelchairs are folded along a vertical axis that brings together the wheels of the chairs. With a canvas seat and a canvas back, such chairs may be readily and quickly unfolded to be placed into service.

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