Text information serves as an understandable and comprehensive indicator, which plays a significant role in navigation and recognition in our daily lives. It is very difficult to access this valuable information for blind or visually impaired persons, in particular, in unfamiliar environments. With the development of computer vision technology and smart mobile applications, many assistive syste...

Conventional wearable robots comprised of rigid joints and links are very limited in providing proper assistance for people in need on a daily basis. Commonly used actuators and sensors make it challenging for researchers and engineers to design compact and lightweight wearable systems which would be truly mobile and non-restrictive for the wearer. In our work, we are focused on developing ligh...

Soft robots fabricated from low modulus, compliant materials hold significant potential for medical device applications that warrant safe, synergistic interaction with humans. We have recently applied this technology to develop ventricular assistive devices (VADs) that can externally massage the failing heart [1][2]. In heart failure (HF), the heart cannot provide sufficient pumping support to ...

Wearable technology has become an important trend in consumer electronics in the past year. The miniaturization and mass production of myriad sensors have made possible the integration of sensors and output devices in wearable platforms. Despite the consumer focus of the wearable revolution some surgical applications are being developed. These fall into augmentative, assistive, and assessment f...

Assistive drawing devices help Cerebral Palsy children to communicate and express themselves. This case study introduces the design of a unique assistive drawing device for a Cerebral Palsy child with upper limbs disability using the USERfit framework for user-centred design. The product design includes three parts: (1) hand-grip assistive device, (2) arm support assistive device and (3) moving...

OBJECTIVES To investigate patients' mobility and satisfaction with their lower-limb prosthetic or orthotic device and related service delivery in Sierra Leone; to compare groups of patients regarding type and level of assistive device, gender, area of residence, income; and to identify factors associated with satisfaction with the assistive device and service. METHODS A total of 139 patients ...

An assistive device is designed to accommodate the special needs of disability that can help people with physical, mental or cognitive challenges go through their day-to-day activities with less difficulty. An assistive device usually provide alternatives to functional limitations imposed by the client's disorder, and thereby minimising rehabilitation costs. It is therefore important to know ab...

Practitioners usually expect that real-time computer vision systems such as face recognition systems will require hardware components with high processing power. In this paper, we present a concept to show that it is technically possible to develop a simple real-time face recognition system in a wearable device with low processing power – in this case an assistive device for the visually impair...