Wheelchair-mounted robotic arms: a survey of occupational therapists’ practices and perspectives

Wheelchair Mounted Robotic Arms: Occupational Therapy Perceptions and Practices

This paper focuses on kinematic analysis and evaluation of wheelchair mounted robotic arms (WMRA). It addresses the kinematics of the WMRA with respect to its ability to reach common positions while performing activities of daily living (ADL). A procedure is developed for the kinematic analysis and evaluation of a WMRA. In an effort to evaluate two commercial WMRAs, the procedure for kinematic analysis is applied to each manipulator. Design recommendations and insights with regard to each device are obtained and used to design a new WMRA to overcome the limitations of these devices. This method benefits the researchers by providing a standardized procedure for kinematic analysis of WMRAs that is capable of evaluating independent designs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected over 700 million people globally, straining healthcare systems and highlighting the need for interprofessional collaboration. The aim of this study was to describe interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) experiences from the perspectives of occupational therapists (OTs) and physical therapists (PTs) who were employed in a medical center both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative study, conducted from July 2020–November 2021, delved into the lived experiences of occupational and physical therapists in an inpatient setting during the pandemic through analysis of semi-structured interviews and journal entries. The pandemic prompted fear, uncertainty, and ethical dilemmas among therapists, affecting patient-centered care. Roles expanded, and teamwork challenges emerged in defining boundaries, while communication dynamics were transformed by virtual technologies. The pandemic affected therapists’ values and ethics, and evolving roles brought expanded tasks. The crisis showcased both collaboration potential and the need to address team disparities. This study highlights the significance of values, roles, teams, and communication for occupational and physical therapists during the COVID-19 pandemic providing valuable insights into interprofessional collaboration’s effect on healthcare delivery in times of crisis and beyond.

History, Current Practice, and the Future of Wound Care for Occupational and Physical Therapists.

This paper focuses on kinematic analysis, evaluation and design of wheelchair mounted robotic arms (WMRA). It addresses the kinematics of the WMRA with respect to its ability to reach common positions while performing activities of daily living (ADL). A procedure is developed for the kinematic analysis and evaluation of WMRAs. In an effort to evaluate two commercial WMRAs, the procedure for kinematic analysis is applied to each manipulator. Design recommendations and insights with regard to each device are obtained and used to design a new WMRA to overcome the limitations of these devices. This method benefits the researchers by providing a standardized procedure for kinematic analysis of WMRAs that is capable of evaluating independent designs

Wheelchair mounted robotic arms (WMRA) aim to help individuals with physical disabilities such as spine injuries or amputated arms by improving independent living and social participation of individuals with upper extremity impairments. Various research has been conducted and shown different ways of controlling the position of a robotic arm using Proportional Integral-derivative (PID). However, Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC), when well designed, can behave like a nonlinear controller or even like a set of linear PID controllers that operate differently according to the inputs. Using FLC in this application has benefits in various aspects mentioned in the paper. Therefore, the focus of our research is to prove the performance of the studied position controller using Fuzzy Logic. The assessment is based on system efficiency, settling time to changes in the command signals and system overshoot.

Purpose This review examines wheelchair-mounted robotic arms (WMRAs) as an emerging assistive technology that enhances independence and quality of life for individuals with upper- and lower-limb disabilities. By enabling independent performance of activities of daily living (ADLs), WMRAs hold significant promise for disability and rehabilitation. The article aims to critically evaluate the state of the art in WMRA research and development, identifying persistent challenges and highlighting promising innovations. Materials and Methods The review systematically analyzes literature on WMRAs published between 2001 and 2025. The analysis emphasizes design specifications, degrees of freedom, actuation methods, control strategies, and performance evaluations. A comparative synthesis is conducted to assess how existing systems support ADL execution, while also integrating technical considerations with user-centered outcomes. Results and Conclusions The findings indicate that current WMRA designs face significant limitations, including restricted workspace coverage, inadequate gripper dexterity, suboptimal kinematic configurations, limited payload capacity, high cost, and lack of modularity. Safety mechanisms remain underdeveloped, creating barriers to broader adoption. Nevertheless, advancements in AI-driven control systems, modular design strategies, and integration with complementary assistive technologies demonstrate promising progress. The review concludes that WMRAs have substantial potential to improve autonomy and daily functioning for individuals with disabilities. Addressing technical and practical shortcomings is essential to ensure successful real-world deployment. These insights contribute to disability and rehabilitation research, as they highlight pathways to enhance accessibility, safety, and cost-effectiveness in assistive technologies that support independent living.

Purpose The increasing prevalence of upper limb dysfunctions due to stroke, spinal cord injuries, and multiple sclerosis presents a critical challenge in assistive technology: designing robotic arms that are both energy‑efficient and capable of effectively performing activities of daily living (ADLs). This challenge is exacerbated by the need to ensure these devices are accessible for non‑expert users and can operate within the spatial constraints typical of everyday environments. Despite advancements in wheelchair‑mounted robotic arms (WMRAs), existing designs do not achieve an optimal balance—minimizing energy consumption and space while maximizing kinematic performance and workspace. Most robotic arms can perform a range of ADLs, but they do not account for outdoor environments where energy conservation is crucial. Furthermore, the need for WMRAs to be compact in idle configurations—essential for navigating through doors or between aisles—adds another layer of complexity to their design. This paper addresses these multifaceted design challenges by proposing a novel objective function to optimize the link lengths of WMRAs, aiming to reduce energy consumption without compromising the robots’ operational capabilities. Materials and Methods To achieve this optimization, the scatter search method was employed, incorporating considerations of collision and singularity avoidance while ensuring the arm remains compact when not in use. The proposed design was evaluated through simulations and experimental validation with both healthy subjects and individuals with lower limb dysfunctions. Results and Conclusions The optimized WMRA demonstrated significant improvements in energy efficiency and spatial adaptability while maintaining the required kinematic performance for ADLs. The validation process confirmed the practical applicability of the proposed design, highlighting its potential to enhance mobility and independence for individuals with upper limb impairments. This study contributes to the field of disability and rehabilitation by providing a structured approach to designing assistive robotic arms that better align with real‑world constraints and user needs.

As the population aging becomes more severe, the development of Wheelchair Mounted Robotic Arms (WMRA) has gained greater attention. There are remaining issues that haven't been properly tackled, such as human-robot interaction and real-time performance. In this paper, laser pointer is used to facilitate the interaction between human and the WMRA, and an improved target matching method is proposed for laser point detection in home environment. Firstly, the laser point's characteristics are amplified through the use of channel separation technique and reflective materials. Then, the laser point is separated from the image using background difference method. Finally, through ASUS Xtion, the distance between laser point and the centroid coordination of object is calculated, and then Kinova Jaco robotic arm is used for grasping. The experimental result shows that the algorithm can effectively detect laser point in the home environment, and as a human-robot interaction, the robotic arm successfully completes the task of demo grasp.

Electric wheelchair-mounted robotic arms can help patients with disabilities to perform their activities in daily living (ADL). Joysticks or keypads are commonly used as the operating interface of Wheelchair-mounted robotic arms. Under different scenarios, some patients with upper limb disabilities such as finger contracture cannot operate such interfaces smoothly. Recently, manual interfaces for different symptoms to operate the wheelchair-mounted robotic arms are being developed. However, the stop the wheelchairs in an appropriate position for the robotic arm grasping task is still not easy. To reduce the individual’s burden in operating wheelchair in narrow spaces and to ensure that the chair always stops within the working range of a robotic arm, we propose here an operating system for an electric wheelchair that can automatically drive itself to within the working range of a robotic arm by capturing the position of an AR marker via a chair-mounted camera. Meanwhile, the system includes an error correction model to correct the wheelchair’s moving error. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system by running the wheelchair and simulating the robotic arm through several courses.

Occupational Therapists' Experiences and Perspectives About Using Apps in Neurorehabilitation in India: A Qualitative Study Protocol.

As the aging of the population becomes more severe, wheelchair-mounted robotic arms (WMRAs) are gaining an increased amount of attention. Laser pointer interactions are an attractive method enabling humans to unambiguously point out objects and pick them up. In addition, they bring about a greater sense of participation in the interaction process as an intuitive interaction mode. However, the issue of human–robot interactions remains to be properly tackled, and traditional laser point interactions still suffer from poor real-time performance and low accuracy amid dynamic backgrounds. In this study, combined with an advanced laser point detection method and an improved pose estimation algorithm, a laser pointer is used to facilitate the interactions between humans and a WMRA in an indoor environment. Assistive grasping using a laser selection consists of two key steps. In the first step, the images captured using an RGB-D camera are pre-processed, and then fed to a convolutional neural network (CNN) to determine the 2D coordinates of the laser point and objects within the image. Meanwhile, the centroid coordinates of the selected object are also obtained using the depth information. In this way, the object to be picked up and its location are determined. The experimental results show that the laser point can be detected with almost 100% accuracy in a complex environment. In the second step, a compound pose-estimation algorithm aiming at a sparse use of multi-view templates is applied, which consists of both coarse- and precise-matching of the target to the template objects, greatly improving the grasping performance. The proposed algorithms were implemented on a Kinova Jaco robotic arm, and the experimental results demonstrate their effectiveness. Compared with commonly accepted methods, the time consumption of the pose generation can be reduced from 5.36 to 4.43 s, and synchronously, the pose estimation error is significantly improved from 21.31% to 3.91%.

The goal of assistive robotic devices, such as a wheelchair-mounted robotic arms (WMRA), is to increase users’ functional independence. At odds with this goal is the fact that device interfaces tend to be rigid, requiring the user to adapt, rather than adapting to the user. Paperno, et al. (2016) identified key physical, cognitive, and sensory capabilities that affect an individual’s performance of simulated activities of daily living (e.g. picking up an object from the floor) while using a WMRA. Greater visual abilities (visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and depth perception), cognitive abilities (processing speed, working memory, and spatial ability) and physical abilities (dexterity) resulted in participants completing tasks more quickly and with fewer total moves. We propose that interfaces should adapt to compensate for deficits in these capabilities to support a wider range of users. A variety of compensations should be developed and tested in order to identify the most effective techniques. For instance, object segmentation, a computer vision technique that separates objects and background in a visual scene, may compensate for deficits in contrast sensitivity, depth perception, processing speed, and working memories. However, contrast sensitivity may be better compensated for by use of a simple yellow filter on the screen, mimicking yellow lenses in glasses used for the same purpose. Similarly, depth perception limitations may be better overcome through the use of multiple camera views or by automating the pick-up and release mechanisms of the gripper. Thus there may be one compensation that facilitates WMRA use for a multitude of decrements or each factor may be better served by a specific separate compensation. In incorporating the effective compensations into the interface software, there should also be a capability of identifying which specific compensations should be activated for an individual user. For this we propose testing for these important individual differences should be included within the software. Virtual or online testing already exist for many of the identified factors and can be modified to fit our purpose. This is especially the case if gamification principles are applied as testing will engage user interest. In this way, the software can adjust compensations as a user’s visual, cognitive, and physical abilities change over time. Future research ventures will include identifying the most beneficial compensation for each identified individual difference and developing virtual gamified measures for those individual differences.

Collaboration between occupational therapists and family caregivers is essential during home assessments and modifications. The shift to videoconferencing-based assessments suggests increased family caregiver involvement, but the specifics of this change are unclear. To investigate family caregiver involvement during videoconferencing-based home assessments and subsequent modifications from the perspective of occupational therapists. This descriptive qualitative study involved virtual, semistructured individual interviews with participants who were recruited through purposeful and snowball sampling. Data analysis followed a descriptive thematic analysis methodology with an inductive approach. All interviews were conducted virtually at each participant's preferred time and location. Fifteen occupational therapists from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) with experience in videoconferencing-based home assessments and subsequent modifications for rural veterans. Four key themes were identified: (1) increased active involvement of family caregivers during the home assessment process, (2) circumstances that require family caregiver involvement for videoconferencing, (3) family caregiver-related factors affecting outcomes, and (4) strategies for effective family caregiver involvement. The findings suggest that veterans' family caregivers play a more active role during videoconferencing-based home assessments than they do during traditional in-person assessments. This increased involvement may lead to a higher workload for VHA occupational therapists, who should now train caregivers, and for family caregivers themselves, who need to perform tasks previously handled by occupational therapists during home visits. To address this challenge, occupational therapists can leverage the insights extracted from this study. Plain-Language Summary: Occupational therapists often collaborate with family caregivers to assess the safety and accessibility of clients in their homes, recommending changes to the home environment accordingly. However, occupational therapy practitioners do not fully understand how much family caregivers are involved in videoconferencing-based home assessments, which is a new remote method, and subsequent modifications to client interventions. In this study, we explored, through interviews with 15 occupational therapists from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), how family caregivers are involved in videoconferencing-based home assessments and subsequent modifications that are made to client interventions. We found that family caregivers have a greater responsibility for additional tasks during videoconferencing compared with traditional in-person assessments, including conducting measurements typically handled by occupational therapists. This understanding will help VHA occupational therapists adjust their practices to improve service delivery and reduce the workload for both occupational therapists and family caregivers.

Objective: The Comprehensive ICF Core Set for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an application of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and represents the typical spectrum of problems in functioning of People with MS (PwMS). The objective of this study was to validate this ICF Core Set from the perspective of occupational therapists (OTs). Method: In a three-round Delphi study, OTs were asked about problems and resources of PwMS, as well as environmental aspects treated by OTs. Statements were linked to the ICF and compared with the categories included in the Comprehensive ICF Core Set for MS. Results: Sixty-one OTs from 21 countries agreed on 71 categories that are included in the Comprehensive ICF Core Set for MS (19 Body Functions, 40 categories of Activities and Participation, 12 Environmental Factors). Eleven ICF categories were identified as not-yet-included ICF categories in the Comprehensive ICF Core Set for MS (6 Body Functions, 2 categories of Activities and Participation, 3 Environmental Factors). Conclusion: This study contributes to the validity of the ICF categories included in the Comprehensive ICF Core Set. It outlines which areas of functioning and health are relevant for PwMS from the perspective of OTs and consequently should be assessed.