Use of Assistive Technology and Need for Social Support for Elderly With Physical Disabilities

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine the use of assistive technology, social support in everyday life and psychological existential orientation for individuals with physical disabilities.  Methods: Forty-six elderly persons with physical disabilities (aged 73.7±10.6 years, range 53-93 years) were examined with regard to the use of assistive technology, social support in everyday life and psychological existential orientation by an extensive questionnaire set (questionnaire for assistive technology (AT-24), questionnaire for social support (F-SOZU-K-22) and Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI)).  Results: The subjects stated that they needed aid and social support in order to carry out their daily indoor/outdoor activities (for e.g. dressing, having a bath / shower, using toilet, eating, going up / down the stairs, shopping, or going out). The most commonly used mobility aid was the walking frame that accounted for 61.9%, followed by the walking stick with 40.5% and a bathtub lift with 21.4%. The results also showed the psychopathological symptoms in the sample.  Discussion: Assistive technologies together with the support of relatives and care services help people to cope with a variety of activities in their daily lives with fewer restrictions. The effectiveness of the aids differs between participants because it depends on several factors such as health, knowledge, and information about aids, as well as the appropriate selection of aids

Sharif CESR Small Size Robocup Team

Introduction Robotic soccer is a challenD88 research area, which in volves multi leagen ts that ntp to collaboratein an adversarial en viron8] t to achieve s ecific objectives. Here we describe the Sharif CESR small robot team, which was artici ated in Robocu 2001 small size league in Seattle, USA. This a er ex lain s the overall architecture of our robotic soccer system. Figure 1 shows a icture of our soccer robots. Fig. 1. Two robots of Sharif CESR small size robocu team. 2 Mechanics The Sharif CESR team con sists of four iden tical field layersan d a goalkee er. Each robot uses two DC Faulhaber DC motors with a 3.71:1 reduction gear box an twoinW:L+p tal en' ders with resolution of 512 ulses er revolution of motor axis. The algorithm to estimate the velocity from theen# der out ut is A. Birk, S. Coradeschi, and S. Tadokoro (Eds.): RoboCup 2001, LNAI 2377, pp. 595--598, 2002. c # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002 596 Mohammad Taghi Manzuri et al. implemen ted on the robot