Publications

The purpose of this research is to design and develop powered wheelchair add-on units that provide a long-cane-based one-hand wireless wheelchair control with a driving safety assurance called ‘in-air bumper’ for people with vision and mobility issues. The focus group meeting conducted with four participants (two potential end-users and two orientation & mobility specialists…

Objective: To develop a protocol-independent integrated assistive smart-home technology to enhance the ability of people with cognitive impairments to live more safely and independently in their homes, leveraging the existing connected-home products and implementing intellignet context-aware ADL inference engine for home safety and independent living.Design: Participatory Action Design collaborating with end-users and other key…

We developed a 3D vision-based semi-autonomous control interface for assistive robotic manipulators. It was implemented based on one of the most popular commercially available assistive robotic manipulator combined with a low-cost depth-sensing camera mounted on the robot base. To perform a manipulation task with the 3D vision-based semi-autonomous control interface, a user starts operating…

Approximately 3.3 million Americans over the age of 15 use wheelchairs daily (Census, 2010). Wheelchair users rely heavily on their upper extremities to complete common but essential activities of daily living such as getting in and out of bed, transferring to a toilet or a shower, and transferring in and out of a car.…

Research Objectives: This study has aimed to gain a better understanding of the characteristics of robotic manipulation performed by persons with physical disabilities.Design: Case-control study.Setting: Laboratory-based evaluation with a series of robotic manipulation tasks using a standardized ARM evaluation tool (ARMET). The ARMET is a task board which includes three kinds of common household…

Purpose: To investigate a new alternative interaction method, called circling interface, for manipulating on-screen objects. To specify a target, the user makes a circling motion around the target. To specify a desired pointing command with the circling interface, each edge of the screen is used. The user selects a command before circling the target. Method:…

Background: Assistive robotic manipulators (ARMs) have been developed to provide enhanced assistance and independence in performance of daily activities among people with spinal cord injury when a caregiver is not on site. However, the current commercial ARM user interfaces (UIs) may be difficult to learn and control. A touchscreen mobile UI was developed to overcome…

We have developed a 3D vision-based semiautonomous assistive robot arm control method, called AROMA-V, to provide intelligent robotic manipulation assistance to individuals with impaired motor control. A working prototype AROMA-V was built on a JACO robotic manipulator combined with a low-cost short-range 3D depthsensing camera. In performing actual robotic manipulation tasks with the AROMA-V,…

Improper transfer technique predisposes wheelchair users to upper limb joint pain and injuries. The purpose of the current study is to investigate if the Kinect can distinguish between proper and improper transfer techniques. Nine full time wheelchair users performed sitting pivot transfers and the quality of their transfer was scored using the Transfer Assessment…

Purpose: To evaluate the performance of the circling interface, which is an alternative interaction method for selecting and manipulating on-screen objects based on circling the target, rather than pointing and clicking. Method: We conducted empirical evaluations with actual head-mounted mouse emulator users from two different groups: individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) and individuals with cerebral…