Abstract
Recent almost developed countries like Japan, senior people are increasing. In such as aging society, supplying human resource to care the senior people doesn't catch up with its demands. Therefore, the societies encourage the cared elderly people become to manage to live by themselves in their life. To realize such as the society of independent elderly people, many assistive machines and tools are developed. In particular, electric wheelchairs are very effective to keep and improve their Quality of Life (QOL). In this study, to promote the use of electric wheelchairs, a novel operation system for electric wheelchair using pointing device (Hands-Free Operation-Interface) is proposed. The proposed system can operate an electric wheelchair without body action. To investigate operation system of the wheelchair, its driving performance is compared with driving using a standard joystick under same slalom course running. There were some obstacles in the slalom course, driver needed to drive the electric wheelchair and make own way around these obstacles to goal. In this experiment, success-ratio and running time are compared between Hands-Free Operation-Interface and standard joystick operation to evaluate the operability of the systems. As a result, it is suggested that success-ratio is depended on operators, and the average of success-ratio is 67 %. Also running time is observed that depended on driving ability of operators. Therefore, these results showed that practice and adapting of users are necessary to drive the electric wheelchair using the proposed operation system. In addition, this study showed some direction for controlling the system safely.
Highlights
Gap between human resource and demands on nursing-care is wider with low-birth rate and high aging speed in Japanese society
Current society need to encourage independence of care-receivers including elderly people in their life. To realize such as independent society in care-receivers, many assistive machines and tools are under development for reducing careworkers
It is expected to realize a novel operation system which be intuitive controlled by corresponding between detected face orientation and the progressing direction of the wheelchair
Summary
Gap between human resource and demands on nursing-care is wider with low-birth rate and high aging speed in Japanese society. In such background, current society need to encourage independence of care-receivers including elderly people in their life. Conventional electric wheelchairs need to be controlled and handled by body actions of the user. The authors developed and evaluated a Hands-Free Operation-Interface. The Hands-Free Operation-Interface detects electric potential of masseter muscle and head position. By measuring electric potential of the muscle, it is determined whether occlusion of mouth as voluntary action or not. It is expected to realize a novel operation system which be intuitive controlled by corresponding between detected face orientation and the progressing direction of the wheelchair. Wheelchair using Hands-Free Operation-Interface without controlling from upper limbs of human body is proposed. To evaluate operability of this developed system, it is recorded success-ratio and the running time on a slalom running
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