chup
What it does
The objective of chup is to help you get off that chair. chup packs neatly into a briefcase, and you can set it up in any chair you want to.
chup gives you a gentle, but significant nudge - all you have to do is move your fingers a bit!
We use a bicycle pump for our prototype, but in the future our product will use an electric pump for convenience. The pump fills an airbag, and before you know it, you're out of your chair!
Feel
Specially abled people have problems getting of their chairs, and very often, even armrests aren't enough for getting up.
This is true not only for people with special abilities, but happens to almost everyone as their muscles degrade with age.
Imagine
What if we could design an addon that fits onto any chair - and it would give you a gentle push to help you up.
Do, and experiment
The pushing mechanism
Our initial design had springs instead of an airbag, and we went with an airbag instead of springs because the springs would give you a sudden push up, which might get you off balance and cause you to fall.
We've experimented we 3 different kinds of airbags - A plastic bag, A car tire's tube, a football bladder and a hot water balloon.
We went with a hot water balloon because that gives us enough scope in angle, while also being quicker to fill.
The outer cover
We tried various kinds of material for the outer cover.
We used cardboard for our first prototype, and decided to not go with that because it was too weak.
We tried plywood for our second, and while it was strong, it was too heavy for chup to remain portable.
Finally, we ended up going with cutting up an existing chair (just for the prototype ;p), it not being fairly strong, and still light.
To improve portability, we've also added grips that allow you to carry chup as a briefcase.
The pump
Our first prototype required us to pump air with our mouth, but we quickly realized that was not the way to go, when the max weight we could push with it was 2.3 KGs
So, we used a football pump for the next prototype, and while it was effective, we didn't go for it because it was too inconvenient to use, and not very portable.
For our prototype, we're using a bicycle pump that fills up our airbag fast.
In the future of our product, we're looking to incorporate an electric pump for greater convenience.
If you're wondering how the airbag deflates, let me tell you something first - It's a feature, not a bug ;)
There's a really SMALL hole in the airbag that allows air to escape, and fully deflates in about 2 minutes, requiring no work from you!
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If you're reading this, we must be doing it right :)