The designers of an electric wheelchair share scheme and two exoskeletons are among the five finalists of the Mobility Unlimited Challenge who will be given $500,000 each to develop their prototypes.
Run by the Toyota Mobility Foundation together with Nesta's Challenge Prize Centre, the Mobility Unlimited Challenge recognises the best new designs that improve the lives of people with lower-limb paralysis or paraplegia.
A sharing scheme called Moby is one of the five proposals on the Mobility Unlimited Challenge shortlist
Announced at at tech show CES today, the five finalists have each been awarded $500,000 (£398,000), with the winning designer, which will be announced in 2020, set to be awarded an additional $1 million (£796,000).
The shortlist includes Moby, a bike share scheme equivalent for electric wheelchairs, devised by Italy's Italdesign. Moby would work in a similar manner to bike sharing schemes
The scheme would enable people who use lightweight manual wheelchairs to slide them into an electric-powered pod when they want to cover greater distances.
Italdesign wants to enable wheelchair users to travel more easily using the scheme, which would be accessed through the same app in cities across the globe.
QOLO is one of two exoskeletons on the shortlist
Two exoskeleton designs feature on the shortlist ? a wheelchair hybrid called QOLO (Quality of Life with Locomotion) by a team from the University of Tsukuba in Japan, and Quix, which enables walking movement, b...