A long-touted feature of the Office Chairiot has been the "wagon" attachment. It's a drop-in replacement for the IKEA chair that allows you to pile anything into a padded wagon box and let the beast haul it around for you. Here it is:
Office Chairiot "Paddy" Wagon installed
As with the rest of the Chairiot, I need this thing to be easy to transport. ("Easy" is a relative term, of course.) I at least needed it to fold down somewhat compactly. The first rendition of this was a bit clunky, so I went back to the drawring board and came up with this:
Office Chairiot "Paddy" Wagon initial sketches
The left drawing above is a view from the top. I placed hinges between boards to see if it was possible to make it fold kinda like a paper back or cardboard 6-pack carrying case. The top-right drawing is the wagon completely expanded or open. The bottom-right drawing is an angled view to get a better idea of what it might look like.
Here is what the unfinished walls setup looked like partly folded (a success of a design, BTW):
Unfinished Office Chairiot "Paddy" Wagon partially polded
With a successful test drive of the idea, I still had the padded interior to make. That involves sewing, which is something I'm not at all afraid of. Here's a shot of the padding being glued to the inside-out padding cover:
Foam being glued into inside-out padding cover fabric
I had hoped to make it so the padding could stay attached inside the walls even as the wagon was folded down, but it was just too much stuff between the boards. That's cool, though. The padding folds up nicely on its own and it super simple to drop in. Its walls are held up by little VELCRO® patches. Here's the stack of wagon parts ready for transport:
Office Chairiot "Paddy" Wagon folded and ready for transport or storage
The next step, which I'm working on right now, is to build the small remote control used to command the chassis while it hauls your stuff. I'm using the same style joystick from the control panel and putting it into a small, handheld enclosure with a power switch and maybe a few other switches for various settings (speed, etc.).
The remote control will likely start out as a wireless system, either Xbee or Bluetooth. I've got the parts for both. WiFi is also on the table. I'll be finalizing the wireless version of the remote this weekend. The wired version may or may not happen. We'll see.
