Methods and systems for automatically articulating cots
AssigneeFerno-Washington, Inc.
InventorsJoseph G. Bourgraf, Brian Michael Magill
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A power ambulance cot having a cot control system operably connected to a cot actuation system to control independent raising and lowering of front and back legs thereof, and which detects a presence of a signal requesting a change in elevation of a support frame thereof and causes the cot actuation system to raising or the lowering of the front and/or back legs automatically upon detecting a condition during loading/unloading a patient from an emergency vehicle or transporting the patient up or down an esculator and methods thereafter are disclosed.
Claims7
A method of automatically articulating a powered ambulance cot to transport a patient up or down a moving escalator, comprising:
- supporting the patient on a powered ambulance cot, said cot comprises
- a support frame provided with a pair of front load wheels and supporting the patient,
- a pair of front legs each having a front wheel and an intermediate load wheel,
- a pair of back legs each having a back wheel,
- a cot actuation system having a front actuator which moves together the pair of front legs and which interconnects the support frame and the pair of front legs, and a back actuator which moves together the pair of back legs and which interconnects the support frame and the pair of back legs, and
- a cot control system operably connected to the cot actuation system to control raising and lowering of the pair of front legs and the pair of back legs independently, and which detects a presence of a signal requesting a change in elevation of said support frame to cause the cot actuation system to move either or both pairs of the front and back wheels relative to the support frame via the raising or the lowering of the pair of front legs and/or the pair of back legs;
- and
- rolling the cot onto the moving escalator, wherein the control system automatically retracts or extends the front legs to maintain the support frame level relative to gravity as the escalator moves up or down.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.