An Interactive Training Platform to Improve Manual Wheelchair Skills

This project integrates Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Vision to provide a platform for in-home interactive wheelchair skills training. In the UK, more than ten million people live with a disability, and 1.2 million people have a mobility disability that requires the use of a wheelchair on a daily basis. Limited access to wheelchair skills training across the UK with training rates below 20% among young people reduces the independence of persons with mobility impairments, not just profoundly impacting quality of life of the individual, but also leading to medical conditions that result from a lack of physical activity, increasing financial pressure on healthcare systems.

This project addresses this challenge through the development of an interactive training program to facilitate in-home wheelchair skills training. It builds on research in computer vision and human-computer interaction to provide a training platform that motivates user engagement, and assesses user performance to provide feedback on movement accuracy previously only available through occupational therapists.

To this end, the first stage of this project involves practitioners and academic experts on wheelchair skills training to identify best practices to be integrated into interactive approaches. Based on these results, the second stage of project will provide a wheelchair/body tracking system that is integrated into a sample training tool. This application will be designed to be suited for in-home use by guiding users through training exercises, and provides them with feedback on accuracy and overall performance. In the final stage, the sample training tool will be evaluated together with end-users and experts to gain insights into suitability for skills training along with perspectives on user experience, and pave the way for the development of a comprehensive interactive training application.

While the project explores manual wheelchair skills training as the primary application context, it is expected that it will make a significant contribution to technology-supported physical activity for persons with disabilities, and lead to a wider research agenda around the exploration of interactive technologies as a means of improving quality of life of marginalized groups.

This project develops an interactive platform to deliver wheelchair skills, and as such, lends itself to cross-disciplinary collaboration and work across sectors necessary to create engaging and effective solutions, in line with EPSRC's 2015 strategic plan and ways of accelerating impact.

To this end, project deliverables are developed together with partners in academia and in the third sector: Together with UK charity Go Kids Go and Prof. Miller at the University of British Columbia, Canada, the project collates a report that summarizes best practices in wheelchair skills training (Deliverable 1) not only relevant to this project, but potentially of interest to practitioners and end-users involved with wheelchair skills training, helping improve training approaches. Additionally, the sample training tool (Deliverable 3) will be taking into account iterative feedback from expert groups, and the pilot user study (Deliverable 4) will invite end-users to engage with the system, directly involving them in the evaluation of the training tool. In this context, the project web portal will be leveraged to share this information to ensure availability of project results to the wider public, practitioners, and the academic community, offering further insights into technology-based rehabilitation.

Short-term opportunities for impact within this project are a better understanding of requirements for interactive technology to support therapy and rehabilitation for people with disabilities from an interdisciplinary perspective, and the availability of a technological platform to further develop the idea of technology-supported therapy and physical activity for people with mobility impairment.

Additionally, this project has potential to achieve long-term impact by building capacity in the delivery of technology-supported rehabilitation suitable for in-home use. This is expected to support charities providing these services in moving to an affordable community-based approach to therapy, encouraging clients to take the lead and possibly alleviating financial pressures associated with the delivery of therapy and rehabilitation.