• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.38 no.1
• /
• pp.32-42
• /
• 2017

The aim of this study was to evaluate driving performance of Healthy and disabled groups (with or without driver's license) to control steering wheel by using steering assistive devices in the driving simulator. The persons with partial loss of use of all four limbs have problems in operation of the motor vehicle because of functional loss to operate steering wheel. Therefore, if steering assistive devices for grasping the steering wheel are used to control the vehicle on the road in persons with disabilities, the disabled persons can improve mobility in their community life by driving a motor vehicle safely. Ten healthy subjects (with or w/o driver's license) and ten subjects with physical disabilities (with or w/o driver's license) were involved in this study to evaluate driving performance to operate steering wheel by using four types of steering assistive devices (Single-pin, V-grip, Palm-grip, Tri-pin) in driving simulator. STISim Drive 3 software was used to test the steering performance in four scenarios: straight road at low and high speed of vehicle (40 km/h and 80 km/h), curved road at low and high speed of vehicle (40 km/h and 80 km/h). This study used two-way ANOVA in order to compare the effects of two factors (type of steering assistive device and subject group) in the three dependent variables of driving performance (the lateral position of vehicle, standard deviation of lateral position representing the variation of the left and right movement of the vehicle and the number of line crossing). The mean values of the three dependent variables (lateral position, standard deviation of lateral position, the number of line crossing) of steering performance were statistically significantly smaller for the healthy or disabled groups with driver's license than the other groups without driver's license on the curved road at high speed of vehicle compared to low speed of vehicle.