NEWS

From stairs to curbs, new power chair expands capabilities for Augusta VA and veterans

Tom Corwin
Augusta Chronicle
Lucas Merrow, CEO of Moebius Mobility, and veteran Michael Bishop, outside the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, where the company was donating two of its iBOT power wheelchairs.

With its advanced processors, gyroscopes, lithium ion battery and the ability to climb stairs or hop curbs, the iBOT chair is not really a wheelchair.

"It's a robot that you happen to sit in," said Lucas Merrow, CEO of Mobius Mobility, which makes the chair.

He was on hand Monday at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta to donate one to local veteran Michael Bishop and one to the Spinal Cord Injury Unit at the Augusta VA. The company is going to all 25 of the VA's spinal cord and disability centers of excellence to donate a chair for training clinicians and demonstrating to veterans and one to a local veteran, Morrow said.

Veteran Michael Bishop demonstrates the two-wheel mode that allows him to raise up in his iBOT chair outside Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta.

The kind of mobility and accessibility those chairs provide is exactly what the veterans in the unit are looking for, said Ashley Pritchett, seating and mobility coordinator for the Spinal Cord Injury Unit.

"It's not your old VA," she said. "We have people who are young, who want to be engaged in activities."

In addition to going up and down stairs and over obstacles like curbs, the chair can perform on different terrains. Bishop, who has needed a wheelchair since his car accident in December 1997, has nonetheless been farming much of the time since. He took some time off recently to earn a cyber security certificate from Augusta Technical College before he "decided I didn't want to be an office worker."

Instead, he's established a farm in Windsor, S.C., to raise chickens and vegetables to sell at a farmer's market. The version of the iBOT chair he currently has is incredibly useful on the farm, hauling five-gallon buckets of water and even pulling an empty trailer.

Lucas Merrow, CEO of Moebius Mobility, demonstrates its iBOT power wheelchair outside Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, where the company was donating two of its wheelchairs.

"I dig postholes with it," Bishop said. "I build fences with it."

The battery can run for 17 miles so "it will run all day," he said. And compared to a manual chair it takes little effort to propel him so "you can focus on pulling up a root or planting," Bishop said.

Other features include the ability to go up on two wheels while remaining incredibly stable, raising the user and allowing them to have a comfortable face-to-face conversation.

"Being up at eye level can be helpful," Merrow said.

The new chairs have lithium ion batteries like electric cars and new advanced processors and sensors, he said. It is also about 30-40% lighter, Merrow said.

"It went on a pretty big weight diet," he said.

After helping demonstrate what the new chair could do alongside Bishop, Merrow seemed pleased.

"This is why we do this," he said. "We want to see the veteran use our product."