Electric Wheelchair Navigation Simulators: why, when, how?

International audienc

The Evacuation Simulation of Wheelchair Users in a Building Fire: An Initial Dynamic Characterization of Structural Egress Components

People with disabilities are one of the most vulnerable groups involved in building fires. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, in the United States alone, an estimated 700 home fires involve people with physical disabilities each year while over 1700 involve those with mental health disorders. Despite this, the current body of literature shows few studies focused on the evacuation of disabled people. This is a direct result of past and present social injustice on people with disabilities and has resulted in high injury and death rates during fires. To combat this, enrich the literature, and improve their experiences in the built environment, this thesis marks the inaugural study of an ongoing project that aims to include all forms of disability in building fire research. This is initiated through the identification of four general disability categories involved in evacuation: functional independence, sensory perception, medical health, and social cognition. By far the most abundant category, functional independence (physical disabilities) provides a starting point for future reference. Therefore, this thesis experiment involves the simulation of 1-3 wheelchair users in a building population of 80 occupants. Two iterations of simulations were completed for a low-rise university apartment building using the evacuation software Pathfinder, and the resulting 327 simulations were analyzed for potential structural aids and barriers to the evacuation process. As a byproduct of this research, a dynamic structural ranking system of egress components is proposed for wheelchair users. Overall, the goal of this research is to provide a connection between people with disabilities and engineers and officials in the structural fire field—therefore increasing awareness among the non-disabled community and improving access and egress in the built environment. Additionally, suggestions for structural modifications are provided to improve egressibility of the simulated building. Finally, the limitations and challenges of the research are identified, and plans for future research are provided

How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

Haptic interfaces for wheelchair navigation in the built environment

A number of countries have recently introduced legislation aimed at ending discrimination against disabled people; in the United Kingdom the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) provides the disabled community with new employment and access rights. The intention of the act is to help those who rely on wheelchairs for mobility and who Frequently find that not all buildings provide conditions suited to easy access, Central to these new rights will be an obligation for employers and organizations to provide premises that do not disadvantage the disabled, This work reports on the development of instrumentation that allows wheelchair navigation within virtual buildings and can assist architects in identifying the needs of wheelchair users st an early design stage. Central to this project has been the need to provide a platform that can accommodate a range of wheelchair types and will map intended wheelchair motion into a virtual space. This interface must have the capacity to provide feedback to the user reflecting constraints present in the physical world, including changes in floor surface characteristics, gradients, and collisions. Integrating visual and nonvisual sensory feedback correlating to the physical effort of wheelchair propulsion has been found to augment the perception of self-motion within the virtual world and so can create an effective instrument for use in the study of wheelchair accessibility within the built environment, This project represents a collaborative effort between architects and bioengineers engaged in research related to platform design, construction, and interfacing, while testing and evaluation has been accomplished with the assistance of user groups

Building Egressibility in an Ageing Society

This is the final report of a three-year project called Building Egressibility in an Ageing Society, sponsored by the Swedish research council for sustainable development (FORMAS). While accessibility is an established and widely used concept in building design, the evacuation of people with functional limitations is still at a stage in which several research gaps exist. In this context, this work discusses the concept of Egressibility, intended as the accessibility to means of evacuation. A categorization of populations with functional limitations in light of their egress-related abilities was performed by reviewing egress and accessibility research. The role of functional limitations on evacuation performance was investigated using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). A qualitative interview study consisting of 28 semi-structured interviews with people with functional limitations was conducted to further scrutinize Egressibility issues of older people. An Egressibility assessment instrument, the Egress Enabler, has been developed based on the concept of person-environment fit. A Virtual Reality (VR) experiment involving 40 participants was also conducted to demonstrate the use of VR technology to study the impact of people with functional limitations on egress. It also allowed to explore how the presence of people with functional limitations affects exit choice. Overall, Egressibility was investigated with the aim to ensure that egress planning and procedures are designed to equally consider all members of an aging society

Transforming our World through Universal Design for Human Development

An environment, or any building product or service in it, should ideally be designed to meet the needs of all those who wish to use it. Universal Design is the design and composition of environments, products, and services so that they can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. It creates products, services and environments that meet people’s needs. In short, Universal Design is good design. This book presents the proceedings of UD2022, the 6th International Conference on Universal Design, held from 7 - 9 September 2022 in Brescia, Italy.The conference is targeted at professionals and academics interested in the theme of universal design as related to the built environment and the wellbeing of users, but also covers mobility and urban environments, knowledge, and information transfer, bringing together research knowledge and best practice from all over the world. The book contains 72 papers from 13 countries, grouped into 8 sections and covering topics including the design of inclusive natural environments and urban spaces, communities, neighborhoods and cities; housing; healthcare; mobility and transport systems; and universally- designed learning environments, work places, cultural and recreational spaces. One section is devoted to universal design and cultural heritage, which had a particular focus at this edition of the conference. The book reflects the professional and disciplinary diversity represented in the UD movement, and will be of interest to all those whose work involves inclusive design

An investigation of contemporary public building design with particular reference to disabled peoples' design needs and designer awareness.

The hypothesis presented in this study is to test the theory that designers do not give adequate consideration to the needs of people with disabilities and that they perceive of people with disabilities as a separate minority who require 'special' provision. Within this context it is suggested that building designers would be more able to serve the needs of people with disabilities if building design education incorporated a more holistic and user-responsive syllabus. The research project, designed to test the above proposition, falls into two principal Sections. Section 1, developed as an inter-disciplinary study, drew documentary and research evidence from a wide variety of fields. The evidence, culled from fields that are largely considered disparate and unconnected, was then examined in the light of the relationships which became apparent from the adoption of a broad, sociological and epistemological approach. The etiology of building design as it relates to the needs of people with disabilities, once developed, informed the methodology of the second, empirical Section, Section 2, which was three-tiered. The first stage of Section 2, comprising a base-line survey, was conceived with a view to gauging not only the degree of congruence between designers' perceptions of need and actual need as expressed by disabled building users, but current demands in terms of patterns of building use, accessibility and expectations, and likely trends in the future. The survey was designed to operate within a holistic framework that, by means of stages two and three of Section 2, examined the access awareness of architecture schools, and the effectiveness of a series of incremental educational techniques formulated to familiarise design students with the design requirements of a heterogeneous public. Functioning as a bridge and conduit between the user and building designer, the broader contextual approach, comprising the sum of the three stages, thereby facilitated the participation of both parties, with the initial building user survey informing the later surveys of designer awareness. The overall findings and recommendations thus arise from the fusion of the epistemological and empirical evidence derived from the two Sections

Challenges in Inclusiveness for People with Disabilities within STEM Learning and Working Environments

This report is a reflection on the necessity for the inclusion of people with disabilities in the field of STEM and the different methods and processes that need to be revised or implemented to achieve this goal. It will delve into further detail about the challenges facing PWDs in STEM through interview anecdotes and survey results. Each solution offered will be accompanied by thorough research and support. Policymakers, teachers and students may use these recommendations to break down barriers to STEM careers and build a more inclusive future

Mechatronic Systems

Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools

Contemporary use of co-design and computational design methods for inclusive built environments: a case study of platform-train interfaces

Accessibility of the built environment has a huge impact on the experience and extent of disability. This is particularly true for public spaces – for example, train stations – both indoors and outdoors. Mobility-related impairments are amongst the most common types of impairments, according to international disability indexes. There is an emerging need for researchers and practitioners to investigate the built environment through the lens of users of mobility assistive devices (MobAD) – such as wheelchairs or canes. The profound implications of design decisions on societal equality and individual wellbeing underscore the significance of this research. Universal Design is a late twentieth-century design philosophy aimed at creating built environments that are accessible for both disabled and non-disabled people. So far, very little attention has been paid to the role of contemporary approaches, such as computational design or structural adaptation, as agents of universal design. The disregard for the functional capabilities of a diverse population as well as the technological stagnation of the spatial design profession are two major factors for built environments of substandard quality insofar as disability access is concerned. The central aim of this research is to investigate the impact of ill-designed spaces on MobAD users and explore how designers can create accessible environments for all. Adopting a research-by-design approach, the research problem emerges from a real-world context and is continuously shaped by MobAD users’ needs and interests. The research-by-design strategy fosters a seamless interplay between theory and application, encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration and stakeholder participation to create a usable and accessible solution. The research design is realised in two parts: Part A focuses on understanding the problem through theoretical background investigation, literature review, and accessibility assessment. Part B centres on designing a suitable solution through a series of design ideation, inspiration, formation, and evaluation processes. The research employs various strategies to identify challenges and arrive at an appropriate solution, such as a systematic literature review, accessibility audits, online surveys, co-design workshops, computation-enabled design development, and usability evaluation. The research revealed substantial disparities in the built environment in terms of MobAD-accessibility. Ill-designed spaces significantly impeded the mobility and independence of these individuals, while well-designed spaces facilitated inclusivity and enhanced user wellbeing. The study identified key areas of concern regarding physical inaccessibility and outlined specific requirements for designing accessible spaces. For the identified research problem, a human-centred design solution was proposed, developed through stakeholder participation and extensive use of state-of-the-art computational tools as well as structural adaptation. Upon evaluation, this solution demonstrated potential to improve accessibility for MobAD users at critical points within the built environment. The contribution of this research has been to introduce new techniques, such applications of deep neural networks and evolutionary algorithms, which can highlight the potential usefulness of computational methods for the design practice. Moreover, this effort foregrounds structural adaptation as an enabler of physical accessibility and, thereby, augments the ambit of adaptive architecture beyond previously investigated domains. Most importantly, this research describes a practical application of an integrative design effort – i.e., one that adopts inclusive, collaborative, computational, and structurally-adaptive approaches – to alleviate social exclusion in the built environment