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Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems

For people with physical disabilities, manual wheelchairs are essential enablers of mobility, participation in society, and a healthy lifestyle. Their most general design offers great flexibility and direct feedback, but has been described to be inefficient and demands good coordination of the upper...

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Autores principales: Togni, Reto, Kilchenmann, Andrea, Proffe, Alba, Mullarkey, Joel, Demkó, László, Taylor, William R., Zemp, Roland
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8892830/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35252140
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2022.831528
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author Togni, Reto
Kilchenmann, Andrea
Proffe, Alba
Mullarkey, Joel
Demkó, László
Taylor, William R.
Zemp, Roland
author_facet Togni, Reto
Kilchenmann, Andrea
Proffe, Alba
Mullarkey, Joel
Demkó, László
Taylor, William R.
Zemp, Roland
author_sort Togni, Reto
collection PubMed
description For people with physical disabilities, manual wheelchairs are essential enablers of mobility, participation in society, and a healthy lifestyle. Their most general design offers great flexibility and direct feedback, but has been described to be inefficient and demands good coordination of the upper extremities while critically influencing users’ actions. Multiple research groups have used Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to quantify physical activities in wheelchairs arguing that knowledge over behavioural patterns in manual wheelchair usage can guide technological development and improved designs. The present study investigates turning behaviour among fulltime wheelchair users, laying the foundation of the development of novel steering systems that allow directing kinetic energy by means other than braking. Three wearable sensors were installed on the wheelchairs of 14 individuals for tracking movement over an entire week. During detected “moving windows”, phases where the velocities of the two rear wheels differed by more than 0.05 m/s were considered as turns. Kinematic characteristics for both turns-on-the-spot as well as for moving turns were then derived from the previously reconstructed wheeled path. For the grand total of 334 km of recorded wheelchair movement, a turn was detected every 3.6 m, which equates to about 900 turns per day on average and shows that changing and adjusting direction is fundamental in wheelchair practice. For moving turns, a median turning radius of 1.09 m and a median turning angle of 39° were found. With a median of 89°, typical turning angles were considerably larger for turns-on-the-spot, which accounted for roughly a quarter of the recognised turns and often started from a standstill. These results suggest that a frequent pattern in daily wheelchair usage is to initiate movement with an orienting turn-on-the-spot, and cover distances with short, straightforward sections while adjusting direction in small and tight moving turns. As large bends often require simultaneous pushing and breaking, this is, perhaps, the result of users intuitively optimising energy efficiency, but more research is needed to understand how the design of the assistive devices implicitly directs users’ movement.
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spelling pubmed-88928302022-03-04 Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems Togni, Reto Kilchenmann, Andrea Proffe, Alba Mullarkey, Joel Demkó, László Taylor, William R. Zemp, Roland Front Bioeng Biotechnol Bioengineering and Biotechnology For people with physical disabilities, manual wheelchairs are essential enablers of mobility, participation in society, and a healthy lifestyle. Their most general design offers great flexibility and direct feedback, but has been described to be inefficient and demands good coordination of the upper extremities while critically influencing users’ actions. Multiple research groups have used Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to quantify physical activities in wheelchairs arguing that knowledge over behavioural patterns in manual wheelchair usage can guide technological development and improved designs. The present study investigates turning behaviour among fulltime wheelchair users, laying the foundation of the development of novel steering systems that allow directing kinetic energy by means other than braking. Three wearable sensors were installed on the wheelchairs of 14 individuals for tracking movement over an entire week. During detected “moving windows”, phases where the velocities of the two rear wheels differed by more than 0.05 m/s were considered as turns. Kinematic characteristics for both turns-on-the-spot as well as for moving turns were then derived from the previously reconstructed wheeled path. For the grand total of 334 km of recorded wheelchair movement, a turn was detected every 3.6 m, which equates to about 900 turns per day on average and shows that changing and adjusting direction is fundamental in wheelchair practice. For moving turns, a median turning radius of 1.09 m and a median turning angle of 39° were found. With a median of 89°, typical turning angles were considerably larger for turns-on-the-spot, which accounted for roughly a quarter of the recognised turns and often started from a standstill. These results suggest that a frequent pattern in daily wheelchair usage is to initiate movement with an orienting turn-on-the-spot, and cover distances with short, straightforward sections while adjusting direction in small and tight moving turns. As large bends often require simultaneous pushing and breaking, this is, perhaps, the result of users intuitively optimising energy efficiency, but more research is needed to understand how the design of the assistive devices implicitly directs users’ movement. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-02-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8892830/ /pubmed/35252140 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2022.831528 Text en Copyright © 2022 Togni, Kilchenmann, Proffe, Mullarkey, Demkó, Taylor and Zemp. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Bioengineering and Biotechnology
Togni, Reto
Kilchenmann, Andrea
Proffe, Alba
Mullarkey, Joel
Demkó, László
Taylor, William R.
Zemp, Roland
Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems
title Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems
title_full Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems
title_fullStr Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems
title_full_unstemmed Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems
title_short Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems
title_sort turning in circles: understanding manual wheelchair use towards developing user-friendly steering systems
topic Bioengineering and Biotechnology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8892830/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35252140
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2022.831528
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