• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.441-448
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• 2010

In the aging society, the walking assist robot is a necessary device for being able to help the older and the lower limb disabled people to walk. In order to produce a convenient robot for the older and the lower limb disabled, it is needed for the research to detect the implicit walking intention and to control robot by a user's intention. This study is a previous study to develop the detection model of the walking intention and analyze the user's walking intention while a person is walking with Lofstrand crutches, by the combination of FSR and tilt signals. The FSR sensors attached user's the palm and the soles of foot are sensing force/pressure signals from these areas and are used for detecting the walking intention and states. The tilt sensor acquires roll and pitch signal from area of vertebrae lumbales and reflects the pose of the upper limb. We can recognize the user's walking intention such as 'start walking', 'start of right or left foot forward', and 'stop walking' by the combination of FSR and tilt signals can recognize.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.957-962
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• 2005

Today, the elderly is increasing gradually in the Republic of Korea society and this problem will be more serious in the near future. Therefore, engineering support for aged people is required. We are establishing a new field of healthcare engineering for elderly people and aiming to support for aged people and disabled people using adaptive control and instrument technology. In this paper, the goal is to implement the shared control of a robot mobility aid for the elderly. As using this type of assistive technology to be useful by its intended user community, it supports elderly people and handicapped people to live independently in their private homes. The interface transforms the force applied by the user into the robot's motion. Devices like buttons, joysticks, and levers already exist for relaying user input; however, they require hand displacement that would loosen or otherwise release the user's hold. Such interfaces make operation very difficult and potentially unsafe. Therefore, we propose a shared control system. It's safe more than joysticks and buttons. The shared control is a means of registering the user's intention through physical interaction. It's an important component in the development of robotic elderly assistant. The concept of shared control describes a system which is two or more independent control systems. We are using that the three component blocks consist of pressure sensor (flexible force sensor), circuit of measurement and transfer function. Experimental trials of this paper have been tested at the indoor environment. The robot is able to know the user intended direction through haptic device were logged along with the robot's force sensor.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.44 no.4 s.316
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• pp.8-14
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• 2007

Social participation of the elderly and people with disabilities continuously becomes more active due to improvement of social systems and technological development. Various assistive systems, such as intelligence robots and intelligence home systems, have been developed to support the social participation, and obviously contributed to independent lives of the elderly and people with disabilities. These systems, however, usually require expensive special hardware. To relieve a financial burden software-oriented approaches, which utilizes existing hardware such as laptops, can be an alternative. The software should be developed considering users with physical limitation and without much knowledge of computers. This paper suggests software-oriented approaches to solve these problems and describes an actual development procedure of the software with related theories. We also introduce an unified user interface for a special work chair as a real application.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.367-389
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to find out perception types of service practitioners working for intellectually disabled adults on the relationships with their service users who use residential and domiciliary care services. For this purpose, this study adopted two research methods: Q-methodology and survey. This study found out three major types of practitioners' perception on the relationships with their service users. The first is the type of superficial orientation for equal relationship. The second is the type of reflective recognition on the driven relationships by practitioners. The third is that of compassionate at the advocacy for service users. In the result of survey in which respondents are practitioners working in residential care homes, small group homes and community service centers, 48.2% of respondents show the first type, 40.5% the second, 11.1% the third. Recently, in the area of personal social service for the intellectually disabled people, the importance of service users' participation and self-determination in the process of service provision is gaining higher concerns. In this context, making change on relationships between service workers and users is raised as important issue. In this environment, the results of this study could be useful to develop equal and supporting relationships.

• Korea Real Estate Review
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.35-50
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• 2017

The Korean society is currently at the level of discussing the living environment and the housing welfare as factors for improving the quality of life, in addition to most individuals or households residing in a living environment and housing welfare, according to industrialization and urbanization. However, even though the overall housing welfare of Korea has improved, the number of households with disabilities belonging to the social special class is not as high as that of the non-disabled households. It is a reality that cannot be done. Therefore, this study aims to identify the present condition and demand characteristics of the housing for disabled people whose social importance is currently emphasized among the social special people who can be called the social special class, as well as present the housing welfare policy to them and explain the purpose of the improvement plan. In this study, 4,277 out of 8,004 households with disabilities surveyed by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport in 2015 were analyzed. The result of the analysis showed that the economic characteristics (permanent income indicating the income and the user cost indicating the expenditure) of the housing demand of a household with a handicapped individual are important. This analysis will provide more effective policy formulation and policy direction for the families of the disabled.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.63-68
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• 2013

Manual wheelchair is one of the most used assistant device in Korea and the size of the wheelchair is defined as KS P ISO 7176-5 which follows the ISO 7176-5 standard size. But the standard often doesn't fit to Korean people because the ISO was enacted by foreigners' body sizes. Actually the result of survey from the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards showd that the designated sizes of height, width, deep of seat except armrest and the height of backrest of a chair in the present KS P ISO 7176-5 are much bigger and the height of armrest is smaller than the sizes investigated by the survey. In case the disabled person has a long wheelchair use time everyday, the posture of user should be uncomfortable because the mismatched size should cause user's pelvis rotations, slouching pose and low stability. Also, inside of knee may touch the wheelchair seat and user can't keep a correct posture. In this paper, the body sizes of Korean disabled person were investigated and the correct wheelchair sizes for Korean people are provided.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.167-182
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• 2015

The concept of Smart home is receiving a huge attention as a future living environment because of its advantages for elderly and disabled to maintain their quality of life. Smart home is a place equipped with integration of technology and services and closely intertwined with occupant's lifestyle. Therefore it is critical to consider the user's actual needs for ensuring satisfaction. However despite growing researches on user values for smart home, there have been few studies clearly categorizing smart home service and stating user values depending on characteristics of service. Thus, the aim of this research is to classify smart home services on user's perspective, and reveal user values for each smart home services. Through the in-depth literature review, we elicited technology-related user values and service-related user values, and state classification for smart home service. Also the relationship between user values and each smart home services were revealed. The results of this research should help to reflect user's actual needs for designing smart home services.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.187-193
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• 2008

Interface technologies for a user to control home automation system in wearable computing environment has been studied recently. This paper proposes a new interface method for a disabled person to control home automation system in wearable computing environment by using EOG sensing circuit and marker recognition. In the proposed interface method, the operations of a home network device are represented with human readable markers and displayed around the device. A user wearing a HMD, a video camera, and a computer selects the desired operation by seeing the markers and selecting one of them with eye movement from the HMD display The requested operation is executed by sending the control command for the selected marker to the home network control device. By using the EOG sensing circuit and the marker recognition system a user having problem with moving hands and fit can manipulate a home automation system with only eye movement.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.834-848
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• 2013

To effectively use these functions many kinds of human-phone interface are used such as touch, voice, and gesture. However, the most important touch interface cannot be used in case of hand disabled person or busy both hands. Although eye tracking is a superb human-computer interface method, it has not been applied to smartphones because of the small screen size, the frequently changing geometric position between the user's face and phone screen, and the low resolution of the frontal cameras. In this paper, a new eye tracking method is proposed to act as a smartphone user interface. To maximize eye image resolution, a zoom lens and three infrared LEDs are adopted. Our proposed method has following novelties. Firstly, appropriate camera specification and image resolution are analyzed in order to smartphone based gaze tracking method. Secondly, facial movement is allowable in case of one eye region is included in image. Thirdly, the proposed method can be operated in case of both landscape and portrait screen modes. Fourthly, only two LED reflective positions are used in order to calculate gaze position on the basis of 2D geometric relation between reflective rectangle and screen. Fifthly, a prototype mock-up design module is made in order to confirm feasibility for applying to actual smart-phone. Experimental results showed that the gaze estimation error was about 31 pixels at a screen resolution of $480{\times}800$ and the average hit ratio of a $5{\times}4$ icon grid was 94.6%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2018.05a
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• pp.143-144
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• 2018

Generally, to operate the IT devices, a user should exploit his eye and hand. It is so difficult for the most disabled user with the limited vision or hand to manipulate a personal computer and to buy devices assisting the manipulation due to the expensive price. In this paper, we propose the voice system manipulating the personal computer using the Amazon echo. The proposed system controls the mouse of the personal computer and activates functions of the personal computer using the skill stored in the Amazon web service.