Tech 2 Play has developed a wheelchair shooter, called AmiGo.
The AmiGo makes the new sport KickIt (wheelchair football) possible for a target group that has a (very) limited choice of sports. Thanks to this product, children and adults not only have the opportunity to participate in games and sports, but also to develop friendships and experience carefreeness and self-reliance.
Instead of standing on the sidelines, everyone can now participate and even be unique in a positive way: Everyone wants to score such cool goals in the gym or outside on the playing field. In addition, it creates an opportunity to learn a team sport, in which working together, and winning and losing together is an important part.
The driving force behind AmiGo is Michiel van der Boom, the CEO of Tech2play:
“Through personal contact with people from the target group, I was greatly inspired to offer them opportunities that were not self-evident. And if you take a good look around you, you always see things that could be improved. Experiencing carefreeness and autonomy is such an incredibly important part of your development and being human, I had to do something with that! ”
A few years ago, Michiel watched MSL robots playing football. The driving robots could shoot quite well. He became very interested in technique, because he connected it to the opportunity to use it for people in a wheelchair. He visited the Dutch MSL Robocup teams several times.
When the Philips team first participated in RoboCup in 2002, they did so with a robot that had a good shot. This was the inspiration for the Portuguese team Minho to develop an electromagnetic kicker. This concept is the base of the current generation of the kickers in the MSL robots. The electro-mechanical kicker concept combined with a ball handling inspired by the MSL team Robot Club Toulon is the technique used for AmiGo.
The VDL Robotsports team advised and helped Tech2Play to build a first prototype. Extensive tests with more than 100 kids in a wheelchair were carried out with this prototype on 10 different schools for children with a disability.
Proto-type-1
The results were very positive (movie) The cost price was still too high for the prototype, and the prototype was still too large.
A number of members of the VDL Robotsports team helped make the pilot cheaper and smaller. The pilot models were produced at the end of 2022. (movie)
AmiGo Pilot production:
More about Tech2Play and AmiGo is available on :
Website: http://www.tech2play.nl
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tech2play/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CoWpukfAhe6/
Source of the photos: Tech2Play
