Andrew Slorance, 49

I FELL out of a tree when I was 14 years old but the realisation that I was paralysed was a gradual thing. The emotions of it are locked away but I remember being in the hospital in Aberdeen and realising I couldn’t move. After about two days, my mum came into the room and I could see by her face. I said ‘it’s okay I know, I’m not going to walk again am I?’ and she said ‘no, I don’t think so’.

The first day I went out in a wheelchair was even worse - the worst day of my life. I was completely stripped of my identity. I was no longer me; I was this kid in a wheelchair. So I decided I was going to change this – I would redesign the wheelchair

Wheelchairs today are the same as the one I was given in 1983 but I want to advance the wheelchair and although I kind of did it with my previous design of chair using carbon fibre, it didn’t advance things as much as I wanted it to, so when I saw the Toyota Mobility Challenge to submit designs for game-changing technologies for people with lower-limb paralysis, incorporating intelligent systems, I thought how do you make a wheelchair intelligent?

I took a few days to get my head round it and more and more ideas started to come. The main difference is the amount of weight that goes through the front wheels compared to the back wheels. You get a lot of drag and vibration – imagine taking your bike and changing the front wheel to a skateboard wheel and you could put yourself in the position of a wheelchair user.

My wheelchair will intelligently adjust its own centre of gravity so that it maximises as much weight a possible through the back wheels and as little weight as possible through the front wheels while at the same time keeping the chair stable. Sensors on the chair will monitor how far back or forward the person is leaning. It will work a little bit like a Segway. It will make it hugely easier to turn and to push.

I ask myself sometimes, what are you trying to prove? Are you trying to prove something because you ended up in a wheelchair? I don’t know the answer to that because it’s been so long now – I don’t know what my alternative path would have been. I was a creative person and inventive but I do think going through a spinal injury and living with it every day makes you a very robust fighter. You have to be.

I will now use the grant I was given by Toyota of $500,000 to develop their concept of my chair further. We will produce a prototype and present something that is viable within 18 months. I hope that what we’re creating isn’t the distant future and that within not too many years wheelchairs will all be smart. Buying a chair that’s not smart may be like buying a mobile phone that doesn’t have a camera.