| Description |
High-level spinal cord injury presents unique health challenges including physical mobility limitations and mental dysphoria associated with injury onset. Research suggests complications arising from physical limitation and mental stress associated with spinal cord injury can be positively affected through recreation rehabilitation, an approach to help people out of a wheelchair and into adaptive equipment to facilitate recreation. There is a lack of equipment availability for high-level spinal cord injury patients for recreation rehabilitation. The University of Utah Hospital and the University of Utah Department of Mechanical Engineering have focused on recreation equipment development to serve the high-level spinal cord injury population. Equipment is controlled with sip-and-puff technology, a technology that determines user intent via breathing patterns. Two primary sip-and-puff control patterns exist: pressure-based control, utilizing pressure differences to determine intent, and command-based control, utilizing serial commands to determine intent. A study was developed to determine which control type would be best suited for recreation equipment, especially relating to precision control in tight obstacles. A 1:16 scale obstacle set and remote-control vehicle were developed to perform repeatable measurements. Eighteen able-body, naïve participants utilized two sip-and-puff control types over five obstacles. Six dependent variables were measured, and an additional five variables were calculated to determine which control performed better in a given iv obstacle. Research suggests pressure-based control is best suited in the environment built for this study. Statistical significance was found in 34 of 66 categories, with all but one measure favoring pressure-based control. Half of all users preferred pressure-based control. Implications suggest participants may perform better in recreation equipment with pressure-based control in environments that demands quick, precise maneuvers. Command-based control is valuable in environments that have no fixed obstacles, require an extended length of time to control, or for users that have a significantly reduced lung capacity. Future work should investigate a hybrid of control types, ensure result trends hold for the spinal cord injury population, and determine if the results hold after controller usage over time. |
