Sit & Stand is a hands-free walking assistance device for people with temporary foot, ankle or leg injuries which also functions as a personal seat that enables the user to rest and relax as needed.
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Crutches got reinvent
Behzad Rashidi is a 27-year-old Ontario-based industrial designer whose student project, Sit & Stand, is being featured by Dyson as one of the standout entries. The device is fairly simple: Rather than a crutch that relies in your upper body to support the weight of your leg, Rashidi designed a device that simply hangs the weight of your calf on your quad muscles, thanks to a support system that spreads the weight over the entire backside of your thigh. That means you’re able to sit while wearing it—an invaluable feature during a long recovery.
“It all started as a class project,” explains Rashidi in his brief. “The challenge was to design a crutch which performs better than traditional forearm and underarm crutches for young adults with temporary leg injuries.”
He designed the prototype and then submitted it to the Dyson Award, which asks industrial designers and engineers to do something very simple: Design something that solves a problem.
Rashidi’s idea made an important tweak: Pull the knee up in front of the wearer using a broad, cushioned piece of plastic, which self-adjusts thanks to a simple hinge system. That support also acts as a seat: When the wearer slouches back, the hinge adjusts to support their body weight. The value of a functioning seat, for someone recovering from a severe injury, is obvious.
