Fitness trackers are great if you’re planning on running, walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, and so on. However these are activities done by people who have perfectly functional legs, so what about those who are disabled and are in wheelchairs? Does that mean that they don’t get to take full advantage of trackers?
Thankfully that does not appear to be the case, thanks to a company called Chaotic Moon who helped develop a tracker called Freewheel which is designed for users in wheelchairs, which was largely inspired by the company’s in-house content strategist Tyler Hively who is in a wheelchair himself. The end result is a tracker built into a wheelchair that contains sensors such as gyroscope, barometer, and an accelerometer.
It even comes with an accompanying app that will track your biometrics, such as your location, how fast you’re moving, distance, speed, and it also measures incline and decline. The idea is that if there are enough users using it, it can help map out areas in the city where there might be hills/slopes that might be too steep for wheelchair users, the disabled, or even the elderly.
That being said while it does sound like a good idea, Chaotic Moon has not really considered the idea of turning it into a commercial product just yet. However if there is enough interest, maybe it will. In the meantime you can check out the video above to get a better idea of what Freewheel is all about.
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