Thorp Elias B, Abdollahi Farnaz, Chen David, Farshchiansadegh Ali, Lee Mei-Hua, Pedersen Jessica P, Pierella Camilla, Roth Elliot J, Seanez Gonzalez Ismael, Mussa-Ivaldi Ferdinando A
IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2016 Feb;24(2):249-60. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2015.2439240. Epub 2015 Jun 1.
Many power wheelchair control interfaces are not sufficient for individuals with severely limited upper limb mobility. The majority of controllers that do not rely on coordinated arm and hand movements provide users a limited vocabulary of commands and often do not take advantage of the user's residual motion. We developed a body-machine interface (BMI) that leverages the flexibility and customizability of redundant control by using high dimensional changes in shoulder kinematics to generate proportional control commands for a power wheelchair. In this study, three individuals with cervical spinal cord injuries were able to control a power wheelchair safely and accurately using only small shoulder movements. With the BMI, participants were able to achieve their desired trajectories and, after five sessions driving, were able to achieve smoothness that was similar to the smoothness with their current joystick. All participants were twice as slow using the BMI however improved with practice. Importantly, users were able to generalize training controlling a computer to driving a power wheelchair, and employed similar strategies when controlling both devices. Overall, this work suggests that the BMI can be an effective wheelchair control interface for individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries who have limited arm and hand control.
许多电动轮椅控制接口对于上肢活动严重受限的个体来说并不适用。大多数不依赖手臂和手部协调运动的控制器为用户提供的命令词汇有限，并且常常无法利用用户的残余运动能力。我们开发了一种身体-机器接口（BMI），通过利用肩部运动学中的高维变化来生成电动轮椅的比例控制命令，从而利用冗余控制的灵活性和可定制性。在本研究中，三名颈脊髓损伤患者仅通过小幅肩部运动就能安全、准确地控制电动轮椅。借助BMI，参与者能够实现他们期望的轨迹，并且在五次驾驶训练后，能够达到与他们当前使用操纵杆时相似的平稳度。然而，所有参与者使用BMI时速度都慢了两倍，但通过练习有所改善。重要的是，用户能够将控制计算机的训练推广到驾驶电动轮椅上，并且在控制这两种设备时采用了相似的策略。总体而言，这项工作表明，BMI对于手臂和手部控制能力有限的高位脊髓损伤个体可能是一种有效的轮椅控制接口。
