Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Reasoning systems on all available data, e.g. for decision support.
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Advanced algorithms, e.g. related to neuro control and smart sensors.
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User interaction for clients as well as care givers.
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2.2. Coping with impairments and disabilities
During life persons might confront with impairments and disabilities and often these
deficits increase with age. The impairments can relate to a diversity of problems: vision,
hearing, and motor abilities. Also the causes can be different: relate to problems with
sensors (eye, ear), limbs or brain damage and vary in degree of impairment such
limited or partial ability to no ability at all. Besides these physical impairments there
are of course also mental or cognitive ones. In case of limited or partial ability systems
can enhance the residual capacity (cochlear implants, artificial limbs or directed audio
beams), in case of total absence of ability alternative sensory abilities should be used
(e.g. speech to text or text to speech). It is currently not possible to cover all of these
with the expertise available within the project.
2.2.1.
Motor disabilities
Motor disabilities invalidate the ability to perform certain tasks due to paralysation or
amputation. This can limit the capacity of operating devices, manipulating objects and
mobility.
Coping with mobility limitations.
Biorobotic systems can provide useful solutions in
order to address different issues raised by the ageing of the population. Biorobotic
solutions can represent a key technology to improve the quality of life of older people.
It is important to point out that only a deep understanding of basic issues will allow the
development of effective assistive and rehabilitation devices.
The OMNI semi-autonomous omnidirectional powered wheelchair (Hoyer, 1995)
was one of the first attempts to develop an assistive device for indoor mobility
including navigational intelligence. The wheelchair prototype was equipped with four
omnidirectional Mecanum wheels and with an array of composite proximity sensors,
each composed of an in-air ultrasonic rangefinder and an infrared detector, with
dynamic local-map-building capability. In later versions of the prototype, new and
more usable user interfaces were added, together with modules for local navigation
based on path storage as splines from odometry data and path retrieval, featuring
playback and backtracing of stored paths.
PAMM (Personal Aids for Mobility and Monitoring) is the acronym for a series of
test-beds under development and demonstration at the Department of Mechanical
Engineering of the MIT since 2000. In particular two prototypes have been described,
namely the SmartCane and the SmartWalker.
The SmartCane (Dubowsky, 2000) was designed for older people with mobility
difficulty due to physical frailty and/or disorientation due to ageing and sickness. The
SmartCane was aimed at operating in known structured indoor, single-floor
environments with random obstacles such as furniture and people, and at providing
equal or better stability than that of a standard four-point cane, while at the same time
providing guidance to destinations, continuous health monitoring and two-way
communication with a caretaker computer. It basically consisted of a small mobile
robotic platform endowed with: 1) a CCD camera pointed vertically along the Z axis to
