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Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technologies to Support Aging-in-Place for People with Long-Term Disabilities

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Understanding older adults’ perceptions of and attitudes towards exergames

2017 , Barg-Walkow, Laura H. , Harrington, Christina N. , Mitzner, Tracy L. , Hartley, Jordan Q. , Rogers, Wendy A.

Purpose Maintaining physical activity is a key component of successful aging and has benefits for both physical and cognitive functioning in the older adult population. One promising method for engaging in physical activity is through exergames, which are video games designed to promote exercise. Exergames have the potential to be used by a wide range of people, including older adults, in a variety of settings, such as at home, in community living environments, or senior centers. However, exergames have not been designed for older adults (e.g., with respect to their attitudes, needs). Thus, older adults may not adopt these systems if they perceive them as not useful or relevant to them. Method Twenty older adults (aged 60-79) interacted with two exergames, and were then interviewed about their perceptions of the system’s ease of use and usefulness, as well as their general attitudes towards the system. Results Participants identified the potential for exergames’ usefulness for various goals, such as to increase their physical activity. However, they also reported negative attitudes concerning the system, including perceiving barriers to system use. Overall, participants said they would use the system in the future and recommend it to other people at their age for improving health, despite these use challenges. Conclusion The older adults were open to adopting exergames, which could provide opportunities to increase physical activity. Given the participants’ overall positive perceptions of the usefulness of exergames, designers must address the perceived challenges of using these systems. Understanding barriers and facilitators for older adults’ use of exergames can guide design, training, and adoption of these systems.

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Assistive Mobile Manipulation for Self-Care Tasks Around the Head

2014 , Hawkins, Kelsey P. , Grice, Phillip M. , Chen, Tiffany L. , King, Chih-Hung , Kemp, Charles C.

Human-scale mobile robots with arms have the potential to assist people with a variety of tasks. We present a proof-of-concept system that has enabled a person with severe quadriplegia named Henry Evans to shave himself in his own home using a general purpose mobile manipulator (PR2 from Willow Garage). The robot primarily provides assistance by holding a tool (e.g., an electric shaver) at user-specified locations around the user’s head, while he/she moves his/her head against it. If the robot detects forces inappropriate for the task (e.g., shaving), it withdraws the tool. The robot also holds a mirror with its other arm, so that the user can see what he/she is doing. For all aspects of the task, the robot and the human work together. The robot uses a series of distinct semi-autonomous subsystems during the task to navigate to poses next to the wheelchair, attain initial arm configurations, register a 3D model of the person’s head, move the tool to coarse semantically-labeled tool poses (e.g, “Cheek”), and finely position the tool via incremental movements. Notably, while moving the tool near the user’s head, the robot uses an ellipsoidal coordinate system attached to the 3D head model. In addition to describing the complete robotic system, we report results from Henry Evans using it to shave both sides of his face while sitting in his wheelchair at home. He found the process to be long (54 minutes) and the interface unintuitive. Yet, he also found the system to be comfortable to use, felt safe while using it, was satisfied with it, and preferred it to a human caregiver.

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The Smart Bathroom: UD through Integrating Physical and Digital Worlds

2014 , Sanford, Jon , Jones, Brian

Although the abilities of people with disabilities are diverse, many accessible toilets are fixed. As a result, they can only support some abilities some of the time. The purpose of this project is to develop a smart bathroom capable of assessing an individual’s abilities at any point in time and spontaneously adjusting supportive environmental features to accommodate those abilities. Specifically, the study will: 1) observe simulated toilet and shower/bathtub use in a state-of-the-art bathroom laboratory with embedded sensors and automated adjustment of fixtures and hardware; 2) develop algorithms that predict support needs; 3) integrate algorithms with the smart technologies to control the physical environment; and 4) evaluate the effectiveness of the smart bathroom system.

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