Visit to Mylapore

At around 4:30 pm, Shree Padmanabhan called me about my visit to his office in Mylapore. This was regarding my enquiry of wheel chair. I told me that I would reach his office at 6:30 pm.

At 5 pm. EML team assembled at Nandhinee for discussion. It was the first meeting. I gave them an idea about the proposed meeting with DoS. They will work out the list of the speakers the team would like to invite for lecture. At 5:45 pm I asked them to continue the discussion and I left for Mylapore.

Mr Padmanabhan greeted me and briefly told about their product range. Later he demonstrated the operation of the joystick controlled wheel chair. He asked me to get a feel of that. The joystick controls the direction and speed. Acceleration and maximum speed can be set as per the need even during operation. When the hand is removed from the joystick, the vehicle motion is braked. The chair has a limit rod on the rear side for the maximum incline the wheel chair can climb which is 10:1 (horizontal distance travelled : elevation). The joystick operation is smooth and precise. The control panel with joystick is fitted at the front end of right arm-rest. The control panel can also be fitted to the left side as per requirement. The control panel has battery charge indicator of three stages. It has maximum speed indicator of five stages. The panel has a touchpad and has three buttons. The horn can be operated by the top button and bottom two buttons are for increasing and increasing the maximum speed. The chair has a battery pack below the seat. It provides energy to two DC motors, one for each rear wheel, through the controller. The operation is effortless. The wheel chair is certainly good as a product.

Overall it was a nice experience to operate the vehicle. Now I am waiting for the quotes and chair details from other manufacturers.

On the way back to hostel, I met some PhD Research Scholars who are here on an orientation program. Some are from Pune Vidyapeeth and UDCT. Actually I stopped after hearing them speaking Marathi. It was a nice meeting. They are staying in Alakananda and will be here upto 4th June.

I have to stop as I will have to reach Krishna. We have a brief gathering of MMM at ten.