abstract introduction: cardiovascular fitness as the ability of the system - respiratory and skeletal muscle to achieve a certain level of activity is defined as, where after spinal cord injury can be reduced through exercise can increase this capacity. objective: the objective of this study, veterans with spinal cord injury spirometric indices in various athletic sports (archery, wheelchairran...

In this study we describe the development of a ride assistance application which can be implemented on the widespread smart phones and tablet. The ride assistance application has a signal processing and pattern classification module which yield almost 100% recognition accuracy for real-time signal pattern classification. We introduce a novel framework to build a training dictionary with an over...

In wheelchair sports, aerobic performance is commonly assessed with the use of an arm crank ergometer (ACE), a wheelchair ergometer (WCE) or a wheelchair treadmill (WCT). There are different protocols to identify peak oxygen uptake in wheelchair sports; however, only a few protocols have been applied to evaluate these conditions in wheelchair basketball players. The purpose of this study was to...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ability of a basic driving simulator program to evaluate and train children with disabilities in their ability to operate a powered wheelchair. METHOD With a rating scale of skills considered essential for safe and efficient wheelchair operation, 22 children 7 to 22 years of age with either progressive muscular dystrophy or cerebral pals...

OBJECTIVE This study examined the accuracy of new wheelchair user predictions about their future wheelchair use. DESIGN This was a prospective cohort study of 84 community-dwelling veterans provided a new manual wheelchair. RESULTS The association between predicted and actual wheelchair use was strong at 3 mos (ϕ coefficient = 0.56), with 90% of those who anticipated using the wheelchair at...

OBJECTIVE To examine intra-individual variability of kinetic and temporal-spatial parameters of wheelchair propulsion as a function of shoulder pain in manual wheelchair users (MWUs). DESIGN Cohort. SETTING University research laboratory. PARTICIPANTS Adults with physical disabilities (N=26) who use a manual wheelchair for mobility full time (>80% ambulation). INTERVENTIONS Participants...

This paper presents an extension of current Global Dynamic Window approaches to arbitrarily shaped holonomic and non-holonomic mobile robots. The algorithm proceeds in two stages. In order to account for an arbitrary robot cross section, the first stage takes the robot’s orientation explicitly into account by constructing a navigation function in the (x, y, θ) configuration space. In a second s...

This paper presents an evaluation and recommendations for the improvement of the user interface (UI) of medical exoskeleton robots for people with mobility disorders. Existing UIs of currently available medical exoskeletons lack the flexibility to serve a diverse user group who require more customization. A UI prototype consisting of a glove with buttons attached on fingertips, and a display mo...

W heelchairs provide mobility for millions of people with physical impairments. However, prolonged manual wheelchair use can lead to pain and repetitive strain injury (RSI) of the upper extremities. The number of manual wheelchair users experiencing pain tends to increase with the time spent using a wheelchair. Although manual wheelchairs have improved tremendously over the past 15 years, many ...

In this pilot study, we assessed wheelchair durability and its effect on user satisfaction. Specifically, we examined the characteristics of the participants' wheelchairs, the types of maintenance and repairs completed, and whether the participants' satisfaction was affected by problems with their wheelchairs. A convenience sample of 130 participants who used wheelchairs as their primary means ...