A Review on Electric Wheelchair Innovation to Ease Mobility and As a Rehabilitation Tool for Spinal Cord Impairment Patient

Abstract

Wheelchair is used to assist disability people to do daily activities in order to reduce depending on other to continue their living. Adding some device into it, wheelchair can be not only help in mobilization, it can be rehabilitation device to the user. This review paper focus modifications done onto market available wheelchair. Variety types of sensor used to improve the mobility of electric wheelchair and to make it as a rehabilitation tools at the same time. Keywords-Instrumented wheelchair, spinal cord injury, sensors 1. INTRODUCTION For those who are having impairment for lower and upper extremity, wheelchair is one of their ways to move around. These kind of people, tend to be more depressed comparing those who are healthy and wheelchair provide them mobility to ease their day. On the other hands, their depression can be reduced a little bit by moving around. In United States alone, more than 200,000 use wheelchair as their primary means of mobility[1]. The demand for electric wheelchair increasing since the price been reduced and user switching from manual to powered wheelchair[2]. Especially for patient that suffer in higher level of impairment to ease their daily life[3]. Electric wheelchair can be control by a joystick to move forward, backward, turn left and right. But for some patient with severe motor-disabilities, they can't hold the joystick properly to move around on their wheelchair. Research to improve electric wheelchair started since 30 years ago to make sure all type of severe motor impairments patient has a wheelchair that can be used by them without bring any harm. Harm can be happened when they miss control the joystick and possibility to hit obstacle and wall. For a cerebral palsy or cognitive impairment, high-level spinal cord injury, and quadriplegia patient, they can't control amount of force to push the joystick and over pushing will caused the wheelchair accelerate instantly. Control algorithm and control techniques should be developed in order to enhance the riding safety for them. Sensors are neededto detect and measure the object and send the signal to processor to be calculated based on algorithm set before. Control techniques is normally for a pediatrics to teach on how to control their wheelchair to move from point A to point B.Basically the objective to modify available electric wheelchair are to ease the mobility by assist the navigation and as rehabilitation tools. This review paper is discussing about type of sensors installedand how it is work to navigate the movement of electric wheelchair and modification to make it as a rehabilitation tool. This paper is written to gather as much as possible innovation on electric wheelchair for spinal cord impairment patients. Lots of innovation has been done to cater the wheelchair movement control problem faced by the patients. Normal wheelchair can't be control easily because of they has problem to move their arm and finger especially tocontrol the joystick. Different sensors and different algorithm used by many researcher but the...