TY - JOUR
T1 - Upper Body-Based Power Wheelchair Control Interface for Individuals with Tetraplegia
AU - Thorp, Elias B.
AU - Abdollahi, Farnaz
AU - Chen, David
AU - Farshchiansadegh, Ali
AU - Lee, Mei Hua
AU - Pedersen, Jessica P.
AU - Pierella, Camilla
AU - Roth, Elliot J.
AU - Gonzalez, Ismael Seanez
AU - Mussa-Ivaldi, Ferdinando A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by NIH National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Grant 1R01HD072080, NIH National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) Grant H133E120010, and NIH Grant T32 HD07418
Publisher Copyright:
© 2001-2011 IEEE.
PY - 2016/2
Y1 - 2016/2
N2 - Many power wheelchair control interfaces are not sufficient for individuals with severely limited upper limb mobility. The majority of controllers that do not rely on coordinated arm and hand movements provide users a limited vocabulary of commands and often do not take advantage of the user's residual motion. We developed a body-machine interface (BMI) that leverages the flexibility and customizability of redundant control by using high dimensional changes in shoulder kinematics to generate proportional control commands for a power wheelchair. In this study, three individuals with cervical spinal cord injuries were able to control a power wheelchair safely and accurately using only small shoulder movements. With the BMI, participants were able to achieve their desired trajectories and, after five sessions driving, were able to achieve smoothness that was similar to the smoothness with their current joystick. All participants were twice as slow using the BMI however improved with practice. Importantly, users were able to generalize training controlling a computer to driving a power wheelchair, and employed similar strategies when controlling both devices. Overall, this work suggests that the BMI can be an effective wheelchair control interface for individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries who have limited arm and hand control.
AB - Many power wheelchair control interfaces are not sufficient for individuals with severely limited upper limb mobility. The majority of controllers that do not rely on coordinated arm and hand movements provide users a limited vocabulary of commands and often do not take advantage of the user's residual motion. We developed a body-machine interface (BMI) that leverages the flexibility and customizability of redundant control by using high dimensional changes in shoulder kinematics to generate proportional control commands for a power wheelchair. In this study, three individuals with cervical spinal cord injuries were able to control a power wheelchair safely and accurately using only small shoulder movements. With the BMI, participants were able to achieve their desired trajectories and, after five sessions driving, were able to achieve smoothness that was similar to the smoothness with their current joystick. All participants were twice as slow using the BMI however improved with practice. Importantly, users were able to generalize training controlling a computer to driving a power wheelchair, and employed similar strategies when controlling both devices. Overall, this work suggests that the BMI can be an effective wheelchair control interface for individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries who have limited arm and hand control.
KW - Assistive devices
KW - body-machine interface
KW - spinal cord injury
KW - wheelchair control
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U2 - 10.1109/TNSRE.2015.2439240
DO - 10.1109/TNSRE.2015.2439240
M3 - Article
C2 - 26054071
AN - SCOPUS:84962616625
VL - 24
SP - 249
EP - 260
JO - IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
JF - IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
SN - 1534-4320
IS - 2
M1 - 7115135
ER -