Edmund Lopresti | PubMed Health

PubMed2004

The smart wheelchair component system.

While the needs of many individuals with disabilities can be satisfied with power wheelchairs, some members of the disabled community find it difficult or impossible to operate a standard power wheelchair. To accommodate this population, several researchers have used technologies originally developed for mobile robots to create "smart wheelchairs" that reduce the physical, perceptual, and cognitive skills necessary to operate a power wheelchair. We are developing a Smart Wheelchair Component System (SWCS) that can be added to a variety of commercial power wheelchairs with minimal modification. This paper describes the design of a prototype of the SWCS, which has been evaluated on wheelchairs from four different manufacturers.

Electric Power Supplies↗

PubMedDate not supplied

An assistive-technology intervention for verbose speech after traumatic brain injury: a single case study.

OBJECTIVE: To assess an assistive-technology intervention for neurobehavioral change, coordinated with a Web-based data recording system. PARTICIPANT: Male, mid-thirties, with a complex history, having verbose speech subsequent to traumatic brain injury. DESIGN: BAB' single-case. INTERVENTION AND MEASURES: The intervention (B and B' trials) was a digital recording of the participant's voice, stating "be brief," delivered at fixed intervals by a personal digital assistant. Utterance start and stop times were monitored with a wireless, Web-enabled device and were recorded in a server-side database. RESULTS: Utterance frequency did not change. However, the total utterance time was reduced during B trials, attributable to the reduced frequency of lengthier utterances. CONCLUSIONS: The target behavior was modified successfully. The participant adopted a specific cue-appropriate strategy. Since a variety of alternative response strategies may be required of a person, given a range of context-specific social practices and community settings, the importance of context-sensitive assistive technology cue repertoires is discussed.

Adult↗