• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.7 no.10
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• pp.239-249
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to analyse various laws and systems to support IT assistive devices for persons with severe disabilities and draw suggestions for laws and systems on the support of IT assistive devices for the ones in Korea. This study identified the details of laws and systems to provide conveniences for the engagement of the daily life and rehabilitation by persons with severe disabilities in New Freedom Initiative policy of President Bush, the Rehabilitation Assistive Technology Act, the US Disabilities Act and the Assistive Technology Act, and analysed the implementation process therefrom. To increase conveniences and introduce rehabilitation technology for facilitating life conveniences of persons with disabilities, it is necessary to establish the arrangement and application of systems and professional personnel through the demand survey on the need for IT assistive devices of persons with severe disabilities in Korea, the support on the developers of IT assistive device program and hardware, the analysis on the roles of rehabilitation professionals and service experts with respect to the distribution system.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.936-942
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• 2005

Recently the exoskeletal power assistive equipment which is a kind of wearable robot has been widely developed to help the human body motion. For the elderly people and patients, however, some limits exist due to the weight and volume of the equipments. As a feasible solution, a tendon-driven exoskeletal power assistive device fur the lower body, and caster walker are proposed in this research. Since the caster walker carries the heavy items, the weight and volume of the wearable exoskeleton are minimized. The key control is used to generate the joint torque required to assist motions such as sitting, standing and walking. Experiments were performed for several motions and the EMG sensors were used to measure the magnitude of assistance. When the motion of sitting down and standing up was compared with and without wearing the proposed device, the $25\%$ assistance was acquired.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.579-585
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• 2010

In this paper, an assistive device for a knee joint to help a disabled person to stand up by supporting power is presented. The device is designed and controlled by using damping characteristics of the MR (Magneto-Rheological) damper. The MR damper helps the person to sit slowly and safely. A DC motor supports muscle power in the case of standing motion. Thus the device helps the disabled person to sit down and stand up. Through the experiments, it is feasible that an assistive device can help the disabled person to standup according to the foot pressure change.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.125-132
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• 2011

The Comprehensive Assistive Technology services delivery was devised to describe the full social and engineering context of assistive technology devices, systems, applications, and provision. It is based on a detailed decomposition of the four attributes: Person, Context, Activities, and Assistive Technology. The paper commences will a brief discussion of the different representations of the services delivery, including rental of devices, modification of manufacture goods and customized production and the use of engineering to supplement some elements of the description. The main contribution of the paper is the presentation of two case studies of different applications of the assistive technology services. These are the identification of accessibility barriers, the analysis and synthesis of assistive technology systems and the provision of a framework for identitying end-user requirements, providing assistive technology and assessing the associated outcomes. This case study involves the presentation of the concept of a personal assistive technology profile.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.538-546
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• 2015

This paper describes an intelligent ankle assistive robot which provides assistive power to reduce ankle torque based on an analysis of ankle motion and muscle patterns during walking on level and sloped floors. The developed robot can assist ankle muscle power by driving an electric geared motor at the exact timing through the use of an accelerometer that detects gait phase and period, and a potentiometer to measure floor slope angle. A simple muscle assistive link mechanism is proposed to convert the motor torque into the foot assistive force. In particular, this mechanism doesn't restrain the wearer's ankle joint; hence, there is no danger of injury if the motor malfunctions. During walking, the link mechanism pushes down the top of the foot to assist the ankle torque, and it can also lift the foot by inversely driving the linkage, so this robot is useful for foot drop patients. The developed robot and control algorithm are experimentally verified through walking experiments and EMG (Electromyography) measurements.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.1379-1380
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• 2010

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.12
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• pp.2138-2144
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• 2016

People with visual disabilities suffer environmentally, socially, and technologically. Navigating through places and recognizing objects are already a big challenge for them who require assistance. This study aimed to develop an android-based assistive application for the visually impaired. Specifically, the study aimed to create a system that could aid visually impaired individuals performs significant tasks through object recognition and identifying locations through GPS and Google Maps. In this study, the researchers used an android phone allowing a visually impaired individual to go from one place to another with the aid of the application. Google Maps is integrated to utilize GPS in identifying locations and giving distance directions and the system has a cloud server used for storing pinned locations. Furthermore, Haar-like features were used in object recognition.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.223-228
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• 2011

In this paper, we proposed a technique to recognize three states in stance phase of gait cycle. Walking assistive devices are used to help the elderly people walk or to monitor walking behavior of the disabled persons. For the effective assistance, they adopt an intelligent sensor system to understand user's current state in walking. There are three states in stance phase; Loading Response, Midstance, and Terminal Stance. We developed a foot pressure sensor using 24 FSRs (Force Sensing/Sensitive Resistors). The foot pressure patterns were integrated through the interpolation of FSR cell array. The pressure patterns were processed to get the trajectories of COM (Center of Mass). Using the trajectories of COM of foot pressure, we can recognize the three states of stance phase. The experimental results show the effective recognition of stance phase and the possibility of usage on the walking assistive device for better control and/or foot pressure monitoring.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.32.2-32
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• 2001

We have developed the power assistive leg called HAL (Hybrid Assistive Leg) which provide the walking aid for walking disorder persons or aged persons without nursing person. We developed HAL-3 by considering some problems of HAL-1,2 which had developed previously. The mechanism of HAL-3 actuator could be simplified and sophisticated by using the harmonic drive. As the control signal of HAL-3 EMG signal was used. We proposed a calibration method to identify parameters which relates the EMG to joint torque by using HAL-3. We could obtain suitable torque estimated by EMG and realize power assist in walking according to the intention of the operator To the remove discomfort for quick motion power assist, the feedforward controller was installed at the beginning of motion ...

• International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.43-58
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• 2023

This article is a spinoff of a doctoral study that was completed at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) in 2018 on provision of information services to persons with visual and physical impairments in public university libraries in Kenya. The article examined how ICTs such as internet, e-resources and e-databases, word processing, websites and more were being used in public university libraries to provide access to information by visually and physically impaired persons. Data were collected from the visually and physically impaired students, University Librarians, Systems librarians, staff from disability departments and library staff who provided services to visually and physically impaired persons. The findings revealed that the visually and physically impaired persons in most of the libraries could not access information owing to lack of the necessary assistive and adaptive technologies and weak institutional support and framework. The study recommend that the libraries improve assistive technology infrastructure, embrace new assistive technologies such as telepresence robots, virtual realities and more, and put in place enabling policies and capacity building programmes for library staff to enable them to provide services to persons with impairments.