Training Powered Wheelchair Manoeuvres in Mixed Reality

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksWe describe a mixed reality environment that has been designed as an aid for training driving skills for a powered wheelchair. Our motivation is to provide an improvement on a previous virtual reality wheelchair driving simulator, with a particular aim to remove any cybersickness effects. The results of a validation test are presented that involved 35 able bodied volunteers divided into three groups: mixed reality trained, virtual reality trained, and a control group. No significant differences in improvement was found between the groups but there is a notable trend that both the mixed reality and virtual reality groups improved more than the control group. Whereas the virtual reality group experienced discomfort (as measured using a simulator sickness questionnaire), the mixed reality group experienced no side effects

Train vs. play: Evaluating the effects of gamified and non-gamified wheelchair skills training using virtual reality

This study compares the influence of a gamified and a non-gamified virtual reality (VR) environment on wheelchair skills training. In specific, the study explores the integration of gamification elements and their influence on wheelchair driving performance in VR-based training. Twenty-two non-disabled participants volunteered for the study, of whom eleven undertook the gamified VR training, and eleven engaged in the non-gamified VR training. To measure the efficacy of the VR-based wheelchair skills training, we captured the heart rate (HR), number of joystick movements, completion time, and number of collisions. In addition, an adapted version of the Wheelchair Skills Training Program Questionnaire (WSTP-Q), the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ), and the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) questionnaires were administered after the VR training. The results showed no differences in wheelchair driving performance, the level of involvement, or the ratings of presence between the two environments. In contrast, the perceived cybersickness was statistically higher for the group of participants who trained in the non-gamified VR environment. Remarkably, heightened cybersickness symptoms aligned with increased HR, suggesting physiological connections. As such, while direct gamification effects on the efficacy of VR-based wheelchair skills training were not statistically significant, its potential to amplify user engagement and reduce cybersickness is evident

Effect of abdominal binding on cardiorespiratory function in paralympic athletes with cervical spinal cord injury

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University on 4 July 2011.Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes a lesion-dependent impairment in cardiorespiratory function that may limit exercise capacity. The aims of this thesis were to describe cardiorespiratory function in highly-trained athletes with low-cervical SCI, and to investigate whether abdominal binding enhances cardiorespiratory function at rest and during exercise in this population. Using body plethysmography, bilateral phrenic nerve stimulation and transthoracic ultrasound, it was demonstrated that Paralympic athletes with cervical SCI exhibit a restrictive pulmonary defect, impaired diaphragm and expiratory muscle function, and low left ventricular mass and ejection fraction compared to able-bodied controls. Using the same methods, it was shown that abdominal binding improves resting cardiorespiratory function by reducing operating lung volumes, and increasing vital capacity, twitch transdiaphragmatic pressure, expiratory muscle strength and cardiac output. A further finding was a positive relationship between binder tightness and cardiorespiratory function. During a field-based assessment of fitness, abdominal binding reduced the time taken to complete an acceleration/deceleration test and increased the distance covered during a repeated maximal 4-min push test. During laboratory-based incremental wheelchair propulsion, abdominal binding altered breathing mechanics by reducing operating lung volumes and attenuating the rise in the pressure-time index of the diaphragm. Furthermore, abdominal binding increased peak oxygen uptake and reduced peak blood lactate concentration, despite no change in peak work rate. Peak oxygen uptake in the laboratory was related to the distance covered during the maximal 4-min push, suggesting that the improvement in field-based performance with binding was due to an improvement in aerobic capacity. In conclusion, this thesis demonstrates that abdominal binding significantly enhances cardiorespiratory function at rest, improves exercise performance in the field, and improves operating lung volumes, breathing mechanics and peak oxygen uptake during incremental treadmill exercise. Thus, abdominal binding provides a simple, easy-to-use tool that can be used to enhance cardiorespiratory function at rest and during exercise in highly-trained athletes with cervical SCI

Evaluating LevelEd AR: An Indoor Modelling Application for Serious Games Level Design

We developed an application that makes indoor modelling accessible by utilizing consumer grade technology in the form of Apple’s ARKit and a smartphone to assist with serious games level design. We compared our system to that of a tape measure and a system based on an infra-red depth sensor and application. We evaluated the accuracy and efficiency of each system over four different measuring tasks of increasing complexity. Our results suggest that our application is more accurate than the depth sensor system and as accurate and more time efficient as the tape measure over several tasks. Participants also showed a preference to our LevelEd AR application over the depth sensor system regarding usability