• English
    • العربية
  • العربية
  • Login
  • QU
  • QU Library
  •  Home
  • Communities & Collections
  • Help
    • Item Submission
    • Publisher policies
    • User guides
    • FAQs
  • About QSpace
    • Vision & Mission
View Item 
  •   Qatar University Digital Hub
  • Qatar University Institutional Repository
  • Academic
  • Faculty Contributions
  • College of Engineering
  • Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
  • View Item
  • Qatar University Digital Hub
  • Qatar University Institutional Repository
  • Academic
  • Faculty Contributions
  • College of Engineering
  • Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
  • View Item
  •      
  •  
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    A Hands-Free Interface for Controlling Virtual Electric-Powered Wheelchairs

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Open Access Version of Record under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (4.569Mb)
    Date
    2016-03-09
    Author
    Gulrez, Tauseef
    Tognetti, Alessandro
    Yoon, Woon Jong
    Kavakli, Manolya
    Cabibihan, John-John
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    This paper focuses on how to provide mobility to people with motor impairments with the integration of robotics and wearable computing systems. The burden of learning to control powered mobility devices should not fall entirely on the people with disabilities. Instead, the system should be able to learn the user's movements. This requires learning the degrees of freedom of user movement, and mapping these degrees of freedom onto electric-powered wheelchair (EPW) controls. Such mapping cannot be static because in some cases users will eventually improve with practice. Our goal in this paper is to present a hands-free interface (HFI) that can be customized to the varying needs of EPW users with appropriate mapping between the users' degrees of freedom and EPW controls. EPW users with different impairment types must learn how to operate a wheelchair with their residual body motions. EPW interfaces are often customized to fit their needs. An HFI utilizes the signals generated by the user's voluntary shoulder and elbow movements and translates them into an EPW control scheme. We examine the correlation of kinematics that occur during moderately paced repetitive elbow and shoulder movements for a range of motion. The output of upper-limb movements (shoulder and elbows) was tested on six participants, and compared with an output of a precision position tracking (PPT) optical system for validation. We find strong correlations between the HFI signal counts and PPT optical system during different upper-limb movements (ranged from r = 0.86 to 0.94). We also tested the HFI performance in driving the EPW in a virtual reality environment on a spinal-cord-injured (SCI) patient. The results showed that the HFI was able to adapt and translate the residual mobility of the SCI patient into efficient control commands within a week's training. The results are encouraging for the development of more efficient HFIs, especially for wheelchair users.
    DOI/handle
    http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/62028
    http://hdl.handle.net/10576/5181
    Collections
    • Mechanical & Industrial Engineering [‎1465‎ items ]

    entitlement


    Qatar University Digital Hub is a digital collection operated and maintained by the Qatar University Library and supported by the ITS department

    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | QU

     

     

    Home

    Submit your QU affiliated work

    Browse

    All of Digital Hub
      Communities & Collections Publication Date Author Title Subject Type Language Publisher
    This Collection
      Publication Date Author Title Subject Type Language Publisher

    My Account

    Login

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    About QSpace

    Vision & Mission

    Help

    Item Submission Publisher policiesUser guides FAQs

    Qatar University Digital Hub is a digital collection operated and maintained by the Qatar University Library and supported by the ITS department

    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | QU

     

     

    Video