This paper discusses a modular wheelchair cushion system intended for patients at moderate or low risk for developing pressure sores. With the use of components with different mechanical and physical properties the modular cushion produces improved performance compared with cushions comprising the individual components alone. In addition to achieving clinically acceptable interface pressures, t...

This paper presents a bio-signal based human machine interface (HMI) for hands-free control of an electric powered wheelchair. In this novel HMI, an Emotive EPOC sensor is deployed to detect facial expressions and head movements of users, which are then recognized and converted to four uni-modal control modes and two bi-modal control modes to operate the wheelchair. Nine facial expressions and ...

This paper presents a novel human machine interface for people with severe disabilities to control an electric powered wheelchair using face movements. Five face movements including jaw clenching and eye closing movements are identified by extracting movement features from both forehead Electromyography (EMG) signal and facial image information. A real-world indoor environment is setup for eval...

To compare the velocity characteristics of wheelchair propulsion with and without the use of a tennis racquet, eight male wheelchair tennis players performed a series of 20m sprints from a stationary start. The maximum velocities reached on average 4.39 ± 0.74 m/s; however, they were reduced by 0.18 ± 0.06 m/s during the racquet condition. Furthermore, when wheeling under the racquet condition,...

Wheelchair standards have been under development for several years. A set of tests has been approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and by the International Standards Organization (ISO) but continue to be refined. Static stability is one of the indicators used to evaluate manual wheelchairs and is measured by placing a loaded wheelchair on a platform that is tilted until th...

An electroencephalography (EEG) based brain computer interface (BCI) system with the ability of choosing among 4 options reliably every 1 second has been developed. The system has been used to control a tele-operated robot or wheelchair. The commands from the BCI system have been used as high and low level commands to control the tele-operated robot/wheelchair. High level BCI commands take adva...

OBJECTIVES To test the hypothesis that powered wheelchair users who receive the Wheelchair Skills Training Program (WSTP) improve their wheelchair skills in comparison with a control group that receives standard care, and secondarily to assess goal achievement, satisfaction with training, retention, injury rate, confidence with wheelchair use, and participation. DESIGN Randomized controlled t...

Smart wheelchairs that can detect and avoid obstacles have been developed with the goal of serving as mobility aids for persons with disabilities who find standard power wheelchairs difficult or impossible to use [58]. By improving mobility and autonomy, they have the potential to improve the health of populations ranging from the severely disabled to the growing numbers of aging people [13]. W...

In this paper, we use the optical-type eye tracking system to control powered wheelchair. The userís eye movements are translated to screen position using the optical-type eye tracking system. The pupil-tracking goggles with a video CCD camera and a frame grabber analyzes a series of human pupil images when the user is gazing at the screen. A new calibration algorithm is then used to determine ...