Hokyoo Lee

Virtual Reality Based Therapy Application for Developmental Disordered Children

We have developed a pen tablet based VR therapy tool for children with develop-mental disabilities. It aims to stimulate visual, audio and haptic sensation. It could be help for sensor integration and cognition treatment. The therapist could edit the task as her/his planed and record the stylus trajectory. It could be help for quantitative therapy and evaluation. The experiment was carried out with normal healthy subjects and confirmed the basic functions of our developed tool.

Effect of Tire Pressure to Physical Workload at Operating a Manual Wheelchair

It is often experienced that low tire pressure of the wheelchair not only increases running resistance, but also reduces parking brake performance. In this study, the required driving forces for different tire pressures were experimentally measured and evaluated. It was indicated from the result that the wheelchair with proper tire pressure could be run with less workload of wheelchair-user. Then it was also indicated that the wheelchair with a lower tire pressure needed more workload of wheelchair-user even on hard level surface.

Biomechanical analysis using Kinovea for sports application

This paper assesses the reliability of HD VideoCam–Kinovea as an alternative tool in conducting motion analysis and measuring knee relative angle of drop jump movement. The motion capture and analysis procedure were conducted in the Biomechanics Lab, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Omiya Campus, Japan. A healthy subject without any gait disorder (BMI of 28.60 ± 1.40) was recruited. The volunteered subject was asked to per the drop jump movement on preset platform and the motion was simultaneously recorded using an established infrared motion capture system (Hawk–Cortex) and a HD VideoCam in the sagittal plane only. The capture was repeated for 5 times. The outputs (video recordings) from the HD VideoCam were input into Kinovea (an open-source software) and the drop jump pattern was tracked and analysed. These data are compared with the drop jump pattern tracked and analysed earlier using the Hawk–Cortex system. In general, the results obtained (drop jump pattern) using the HD VideoCam–Kinovea are close to the results obtained using the established motion capture system. Basic statistical analyses show that most average variances are less than 10%, thus proving the repeatability of the protocol and the reliability of the results. It can be concluded that the integration of HD VideoCam–Kinovea has the potential to become a reliable motion capture–analysis system. Moreover, it is low cost, portable and easy to use. As a conclusion, the current study and its findings are found useful and has contributed to enhance significant knowledge pertaining to motion capture-analysis, drop jump movement and HD VideoCam–Kinovea integration.

Biomechanics and Physiology for Propelling Wheelchair Uphill Slope.

A vertical slope of sidewalks significantly inhibits to the mobility of manual wheelchair users in their daily life. International guidelines of the vertical slope are specified approximately 4% or 5% (1:20) gradient or less as preferred, and allow 8.3% (1:12) as its maximum when it is impossible. Relevant research of the physical strain for wheelchair users with pushing on slopes, and the validity assessment of slope guidelines have been investigated. However, the analysis for the effect of a slope distance and their transient performance are still remained. The purpose of this study is to clarify the physiological and biomechanical characteristics of manual wheelchair users that propelling a wheelchair on an uphill slope. We measured these data by a metabolic analysis system, a heart rate monitor system and an instrumented wheelchair wheel. Sixteen unimpaired subjects (non-wheelchair users) were examined to investigate the effect of a long slope with 120m distance and 8% gradient. And five wheelchair users with cervical cord injury were examined to evaluate the influence of different gradients (5%, 6.7%, 8.3%, 10% and 12.5%) with 3m length in laboratory. Our experimental results of the long slope showed that wheelchair propulsion velocity and power increased considerably at the beginning of the slope where the peak mean value of them were 0.96 m/s and 70.8W and they decreased linearly to 0.55m/s and 33.6W at final interval. A mean oxygen uptake and heart rate were increased as the distance increased and their results indicated the extremely high exercise intensity at a final interval that were 1.2liter /min and 152bpm. While wheelchair pushing cadence reduced after an initial interval, mean of strokes per10m increased to compensate the decrease of upper limbs power. The results of different gradients indicated that the normalized power of subjects with cervical cord injury was significant difference between each subject in the ability to climb a slope. Mean normalized power were 0.23W/kg on a 5% slope, 0.24W/kg on 6.7%, and 0.26W/kg on 8.3% respectively. Based on these findings, we examined the relationship between the theoretical normalized power and the lowest velocity to climb a slope, and we might indicate the ability to push on an uphill slope for the persons with manual wheelchair user.