In the past few weeks there has been a lot of chat and speculation about the new generation of stair climbing wheelchairs and their miraculous capabilities.

Much of this rhetoric has occurred on social media sites where a video animation of a man in his wheelchair shows the chair climbing stairs. However i think there is little reality in this animation and the information is sketchy and written in Turkish.

It would appear that the whole saga stems from a prototype that was built about 6 years ago that had a wheelchair with tracks that allowed the chair to mount, climb and descend stairs as well as reclining and extending the users legs out straight. This prototype was named Galileo at the time.

The second stair climbing wheelchair has Swiss origin and looks like it may become more of a reality and is the creation of a group of students studying mechanical and electrical engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).

As and when i find more information on this i will be reporting back!