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Evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments

BACKGROUND: Older adults are the most prevalent wheelchair users in Canada. Yet, cognitive impairments may prevent an older adult from being allowed to use a powered wheelchair due to safety and usability concerns. To address this issue, an add-on Intelligent Wheelchair System (IWS) was developed to...

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Autores principales: How, Tuck-Voon, Wang, Rosalie H, Mihailidis, Alex
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3750699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23924489
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1743-0003-10-90
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author How, Tuck-Voon
Wang, Rosalie H
Mihailidis, Alex
author_facet How, Tuck-Voon
Wang, Rosalie H
Mihailidis, Alex
author_sort How, Tuck-Voon
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Older adults are the most prevalent wheelchair users in Canada. Yet, cognitive impairments may prevent an older adult from being allowed to use a powered wheelchair due to safety and usability concerns. To address this issue, an add-on Intelligent Wheelchair System (IWS) was developed to help older adults with cognitive impairments drive a powered wheelchair safely and effectively. When attached to a powered wheelchair, the IWS adds a vision-based anti-collision feature that prevents the wheelchair from hitting obstacles and a navigation assistance feature that plays audio prompts to help users manoeuvre around obstacles. METHODS: A two stage evaluation was conducted to test the efficacy of the IWS. Stage One: Environment of Use – the IWS’s anti-collision and navigation features were evaluated against objects found in a long-term care facility. Six different collision scenarios (wall, walker, cane, no object, moving and stationary person) and three different navigation scenarios (object on left, object on right, and no object) were performed. Signal detection theory was used to categorize the response of the system in each scenario. Stage Two: User Trials – single-subject research design was used to evaluate the impact of the IWS on older adults with cognitive impairment. Participants were asked to drive a powered wheelchair through a structured obstacle course in two phases: 1) with the IWS and 2) without the IWS. Measurements of safety and usability were taken and compared between the two phases. Visual analysis and phase averages were used to analyze the single-subject data. RESULTS: Stage One: The IWS performed correctly for all environmental anti-collision and navigation scenarios. Stage Two: Two participants completed the trials. The IWS was able to limit the number of collisions that occurred with a powered wheelchair and lower the perceived workload for driving a powered wheelchair. However, the objective performance (time to complete course) of users navigating their environment did not improve with the IWS. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows the efficacy of the IWS in performing with a potential environment of use, and benefiting members of its desired user population to increase safety and lower perceived demands of powered wheelchair driving.
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spelling pubmed-37506992013-08-24 Evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments How, Tuck-Voon Wang, Rosalie H Mihailidis, Alex J Neuroeng Rehabil Research BACKGROUND: Older adults are the most prevalent wheelchair users in Canada. Yet, cognitive impairments may prevent an older adult from being allowed to use a powered wheelchair due to safety and usability concerns. To address this issue, an add-on Intelligent Wheelchair System (IWS) was developed to help older adults with cognitive impairments drive a powered wheelchair safely and effectively. When attached to a powered wheelchair, the IWS adds a vision-based anti-collision feature that prevents the wheelchair from hitting obstacles and a navigation assistance feature that plays audio prompts to help users manoeuvre around obstacles. METHODS: A two stage evaluation was conducted to test the efficacy of the IWS. Stage One: Environment of Use – the IWS’s anti-collision and navigation features were evaluated against objects found in a long-term care facility. Six different collision scenarios (wall, walker, cane, no object, moving and stationary person) and three different navigation scenarios (object on left, object on right, and no object) were performed. Signal detection theory was used to categorize the response of the system in each scenario. Stage Two: User Trials – single-subject research design was used to evaluate the impact of the IWS on older adults with cognitive impairment. Participants were asked to drive a powered wheelchair through a structured obstacle course in two phases: 1) with the IWS and 2) without the IWS. Measurements of safety and usability were taken and compared between the two phases. Visual analysis and phase averages were used to analyze the single-subject data. RESULTS: Stage One: The IWS performed correctly for all environmental anti-collision and navigation scenarios. Stage Two: Two participants completed the trials. The IWS was able to limit the number of collisions that occurred with a powered wheelchair and lower the perceived workload for driving a powered wheelchair. However, the objective performance (time to complete course) of users navigating their environment did not improve with the IWS. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows the efficacy of the IWS in performing with a potential environment of use, and benefiting members of its desired user population to increase safety and lower perceived demands of powered wheelchair driving. BioMed Central 2013-08-07 /pmc/articles/PMC3750699/ /pubmed/23924489 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1743-0003-10-90 Text en Copyright © 2013 How et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
How, Tuck-Voon
Wang, Rosalie H
Mihailidis, Alex
Evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments
title Evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments
title_full Evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments
title_fullStr Evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments
title_full_unstemmed Evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments
title_short Evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments
title_sort evaluation of an intelligent wheelchair system for older adults with cognitive impairments
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3750699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23924489
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1743-0003-10-90
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