Virtual and augmented reality environment for remote training of wheelchairs users: Social, mobile, and wearable technologies applied to rehabilitation

Abstract

New research reports shows that important progresses for controlling electric-powered wheelchair have been made recently aiming people with severe disabilities. In fact, a significant amount of people affected by those physical disabilities still cannot take advantage of autonomous mobility, even electronic or automated ones. For those people, the use of proper biological signals to control the assisted environment may be the only existing solution. In such scenario, the act of commanding an electric-powered wheelchair without proper training may be a serious safety risk. To avoid this kind of dangerous situation and to permit users to make use of such technology, one viable solution would be to be trained by using virtual driving simulators. Nevertheless, when using biomedical signals as commands it is not possible to ensure a continuous and reliable control of the wheelchair, it is necessary to associate the control possibilities with autonomous features such as semiautomatic obstacle detection or contour. Thus, it is interesting to offer to new wheelchair users the possibility of using simulators to allow them to learn to drive at distance, making use of telematics techniques combined with mobile and wearable devices, and publishing their progress and worries in social networks, which is the objective of this work. This project joints complementary skills from researchers from the Federal University of Amazonas, Federal University of Espirito Santo, and Federal University of Uberlandia, with the collaboration of researches from the University of Lorraine in Metz-France.