Why didn’t someone think of this long ago?
The “Ogo” is the coolest thing I’ve seen for getting around when your legs can’t do the job. And you don’t need your arms, either. Just bend in the direction that you want to travel, just like riding on a Segway, and off you go.
You can even change tires and travel off-road…through the woods or down the beach. The prototype can travel more than 20 miles (40 km) on one charge of its lithium-ion batteries and its adjustable speed can hit 12 mph (20 kph). I can tell you more but a video of this is worth a thousand words.
The Ogo is the product of New Zelander Kevin Halsall and his friend Marcus. Kevin is a product desig
ner and Marcus is a paraplegic with an engineering background. After building one Ogo prototyoe Kevin and Marcus had planned to build several more and then move into production. They’d hoped use crowd funding to raise $240,000 to do this but, sadly, they fell short of their goal when they hit their mid-April deadline.
Kevin is now looking into other financing options. But, he says, bringing in professional investors will likely raise the cost a lot higher than the $13,000 to which he’d hoped to limit the price.
We’ll keep an eye on things and hope to have a progress report before long.
UPDATE: The Ogo folks are continuing the project and hope to go into production by the end of the year. Here’s what they say in an email they just sent out:
Work on the latest prototypes are well under way- they includes our latest modifications, making it possible for a wider range of people to use. The donations that we receive will make it possible to get these next prototype models completed and tested among our enthusiastic community. https://youtu.be/R8dWxZ3P_Wo
That is really cool!