Electrifying the wheelbarrow

J-STORIES - Hand-pushed wheelbarrows are widely used on farming and construction sites, but they tend to tire workers out when used on rough terrain with many steep and bumpy paths. On the other hand, existing electric wheelbarrows have a fixed shape so sometimes can’t be used on rough terrain, which has varying conditions.

But why can’t we combine parts like Lego bricks to create an easy-to-use electric wheelbarrow that meets the needs of each workplace?

The new solution to this problem is to attach a tire with a built-in motor to a hand-pushed wheelbarrow and instantly convert it to electric power. This enables powered transport while maintaining the ease of a hand-pushed wheelbarrow. It is expected to make farm work less laborious—something vital to a sector that is struggling with an aging workforce and labor shortages.

A venture company based in Tokyo’s Katsushika ward, CuboRex, has developed an electric power assisted tire kit called “E-Cat Kit.” Mizuhito Terashima, the company’s CEO, came up with the idea after experiences as a student. He wanted to create equipment that works on extremely uneven, undeveloped land, such as fields in the mountains, construction sites and disaster sites.

Terashima was studying robot development and also working part-time at a tangerine farm in Ehime, his home prefecture, to earn money. Sometimes he had to transport as much as 100 kg of tangerines at a time by wheelbarrow along narrow paths on steep slopes with poor footing and overhanging branches. He had to make 25 to 30 round trips per half day, and the general use electric wheelbarrows on sale at the time weren’t good for carrying tangerines.

According to his company, the E-Cat Kit can halve labor on such uneven terrain and cut transport time by a third. And the installation of electric tires on a wheelbarrow takes about an hour.

Earlier this year, the company started lending kits for free to tangerine farmers in Ehime so that they can test it out transporting goods. Also, to counter the damage to fisheries caused by large amounts of pumice from the undersea volcanoes of the Ogasawara Islands, since last October the company has been lending its products free of charge to various companies and local governments to help locals remove pumice.

 Translation and Editing by Tony McNicol 

 Top page photo by halfpoint/Envato

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