The Stair Climber was designed and manufactured as part of a design sequence in Northwestern's engineering school. The idea and design are completely original to our team members and were carried out with minimal guidance from instructors.

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The idea originated from the annoyance of carrying heavy suitcases up flights of stairs in college dorm buildings. After rounds of brainstorming and narrowing down ideas, we decided to make a product to address this issue. 

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After surveying patent records and the internet to make sure no product of the sort existed, we designed three prototype ideas (shown below): a climber with an adjustable platform, a two handed climber, and a tread-roller attachment to suitcases. After rounds of testing, we finalized our design to be a combination: a stair climber with collapsible roller treads.

 

The manufacturing, designing, and testing details are recorded in the design final report, which is complete with tables of content and appendices; please feel free to check it out!