• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.493-509
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• 2013

This study investigated the sitting areas preferred to use by assisted living residents in the U.S., compared the perceptions of staff and residents, and analyzed the effects of residents' and spatial characteristics on the preference for use of main sitting areas such as lounge, dining area, activity room and outdoor area. A total of 102 participants(66 residents and 36 staff) from eight facilities in the seven counties of southern Texas were asked about two sitting areas residents like to spend time at. The results of the study were as follows: The most frequently mentioned sitting areas were the activity and outdoor area as per the residents, but the dining area and lounge as per the staff. It might be due to that the view of staff might have been limited to sitting areas usually used by the severely frail residents. Residents using higher level of mobility assistance such as wheelchairs and walkers, or living in the facility having more dispersed sitting areas were less likely to prefer to use the lounge. The residents who were younger or having good centralized outdoor area were more likely to prefer to use the outdoor area. The preference for use of dining area was affected by its proximity from the residents' individual rooms. Diverse survey methods need to be developed for a more in-depth collection and analysis of data from functionally frail older residents and staff caring for them.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.163-180
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• 1998

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the community based home care service, and make reorientation for better service. The data was collected from the public health center, which was operated for one year, 1997. This case is evaluated and reoriented according to five elements of public health care system; system of resources for public health, organization and administration, health care delivery system of financing, management. In resources for public health, available health personnels are 15 physicians, 17 nurses, 11 nurse aides and 2 other persons. One professional health personnel take care of 609 clients, The equipments used for elderly and the disabled are 6 wheelchairs, 4 walkers, 1 hairwashers and 30 viberations. But these equipments are not enough to deal all clients. In organization and administration, planning and setting goals for community home care are made by the director, supervisor of family department and public health nurse. So there is no regular commitee for home care services in this community. The form of delivery of health care is focused on preventive health care. The important works of public health nurse are health education, preventive care for hypertension, D.M. and vaccination of communicable desease. In finaning system, funds come from central government(8.3%), local goverment(16.7%) and health center itself(3.8%), The services consist of health education, vaccination, clinical test and equipment. There are several local volunteers, which are local hospitals, a college, a christian association, a catholic association, a drivers association and a disabled association. The volunteer groups give physical and mental support to the clients. In management, this health center has three evaluation methods. One is done by local government, one is done by health center itself, and the other is done by clients with questionair. But the evaluation tools are deferent between agency. Home care services must be planned and evaluated. This public health center has to have more personnel, equipments, education for professional kowledge and meetings with community volunteer agencies.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.407-422
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• 2014

Objective: The purpose of the study is to develop quantitative usability evaluation criteria for senior-friendly autonomous transportation robot. Background: The Republic of Korea has become the most rapidly aging society, and is anticipated to enter the post-aged society in 2026. To raise the quality of life of a senior with limited mobility and to reduce the burden of caregivers, many high-tech assistive products with information technologies are developed nowadays. The senior-friendly autonomous transportation robot is one person robot vehicle to move a senior to the destination for hospitals, nursing homes or silver town complex. With built-in navigation system and environmental monitoring censors, it automatically seeks the path to the destination and avoids collision to obstacles and pedestrians on the way. Due to the early stage of the product, few usability studies in this field have been done, mostly on general service robots to assist seniors, power wheelchairs and delivery robots. ISO and KS standards for the service robots are focused on safety. Method: Based on the reference usability index, the early draft of the usability evaluation questionnaires was developed. After small group tests and interviews, the experts modified the initial draft to the Usability Evaluation Criteria for Senior-Friendly Autonomous Transportation Robot (UEC-SFATR). Result: UEC-SFATR consisted of 4 subscales - Safety, Controllability, Efficiency and Satisfaction. All of the 4 subscales of UEC-SFATR were passed the reliability criteria by 4 groups of seniors, divided by gender and familiarity of smart-devices. Conclusion: UEC-SFATR covers wider area of user experiences of the SFATR and is a good measurement tool to help both the users and developers of the robot. Application: This study provides guide to the future product development and product competitiveness evaluation by quantifying user experiences for the SFATR.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.71-84
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to provide information on driving characteristics in persons with spinal cord injury through basic statistic analysis of the survey results. The survey was administered to 44 drivers with spinal cord injury. The subjects' general, neurologic and driving characteristics were analyzed, as well as the degree of difficulty in using their vehicles between tetraplegia and paraplegia. The results were as follows: thirty-five (79.6%) of forty-four respondents was men. The average age was 35.0 years old and the age at the time of injury was 29.0 years old. Their neurologic characteristics were tetraplegics 12 (27.3%) and paraplegics 32 (72.2%). Among complete lesions, the highest level those who could drive independently was C7. All the vehicles were equipped with special devices, including "power steering", "automatic transmission" and "hand controls". The vehicles for cervical cord injury were equipped with "grip bars" as well as for the degree of difficulty in using their vehicles, all the subjects felt that "moving the wheelchair in and out of their vehicles" was too difficult for them to do. We suggest that the driver training should be an essential part of the rehabilitation program for patients with spinal cord injuries to maximize their mobility in the community. This training seems to be essential in order to modify the standards of the Handicapped Drivers Ability Test and to aid the driver rehabilitation program in the health insurance payment system. Also, the driver rehabilitation training program should include instruction in that moving wheelchairs in and out of vehicles.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.17-27
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• 2012

This study provides development information on Omni-Wheel Drive Rider Robot, futuristic electric scooters, with autonomous driving systems that are used for people including the disabled and senior. Also, it is meaningful in suggesting alternatives to replace motorized wheelchairs or electric scooters for the future. Prior to development of Omni-Wheel Drive Rider Robot with autonomous driving systems, it surveyed 49 people, including 18 people who own electric scooters and 31 senior people who have not. The summary of the survey is as follows. First, inconveniences during riding and exiting and short mileage due and safety driving to problems of recharging batteries are the most urgent task. For these problems, the study shows that charging time of batteries, mileage, armrests, footrests, angle of a seat are the primary considerations. Second, drivers prefer joystick over steering wheels because of convenience in one-handed driving against dangers from footrest and carriageways sloping roads, paving blocks. One-handed driving can reduce driving fatigues with automatic stop systems. Moreover, the study suggests many design factors related to navigation systems, obstacle avoidance systems, omni-wheels, automatic cover-opening systems in rainy.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.527-533
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• 2013

BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) is a system that transforms a subject's brain signal related to their intention into a control signal by classifying EEG (electroencephalograph) signals obtained during the imagination of movement of a subject's limbs. The BCI system allows us to control machines such as robot arms or wheelchairs only by imaging limbs. With the exact same experiment environment, activated brain regions of each subjects are totally different. In that case, a simple approach is to use as many channels as possible when measuring brain signals. However the problem is that using many channels also causes other problems. When applying a CSP (Common Spatial Pattern), which is an EEG extraction method, many channels cause an overfitting problem, and in addition there is difficulty using this technique for medical analysis. To overcome these problems, we suggest an optimal channel selection method using a BPSO (Binary Particle Swarm Optimization), BPSO with channel impact factor, and GA. This paper examined optimal selected channels among all channels using three optimization methods and compared the classification accuracy and the number of selected channels between BPSO, BPSO with channel impact factor, and GA by SVM (Support Vector Machine). The result showed that BPSO with channel impact factor selected 2 fewer channels and even improved accuracy by 10.17~11.34% compared with BPSO and GA.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.22 no.3_1spc
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• pp.580-586
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• 2013

In general, manual wheelchairs have played important roles in moving patients from one place to another. However, patients have experienced discomfort getting on and off because of the need for physical assistance. This can be more serious if a patient has handicaps involving the arms or legs. In addition, it could be unpleasant for both the patient and assistant because of the need for extensive physical contact with each other. At times, a weak nurse feels that there is a risk when transferring a heavy patient from a bed to a wheelchair. In this paper, a new non-powered wheelchair is designed to assist in transferring a patient to their bed. This design considers the convenience of both the patient and assistant when the patient is transferred from a wheelchair to a bed and vice versa. The operation minimizes the physical contact between the assistant and the patient. The new wheelchair is also lightweight and portable compared with the normal popular wheelchair.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.225-234
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• 2016

An online suit-customizing system for the special accessibility needs of wheelchair users should be developed because the demand for business suits by wheelchair users involved in economic activities has increased. This study develops a user interface an online customizing system for men's suits specialized for wheelchair users. This study used a five-step approach: (1) search for online men's suits customizing system in web porter sites, (2) select three sites based on three terms, (3) heuristic testing with five web specialists, (4) development of a system user interface based on suggestions for improvement from the heuristic test, (5) usability testing of the user interface prototype by 10 disabled men in wheelchairs. The interface of Company S had high ratings on interactivity, accessibility, informativeness, and consistency in the heuristic test results; subsequently, a user interface was developed based on suggestions for improvement from the heuristic test. This online user interface for customizing men's suits provides better usability to wheelchair users than existing online interfaces aimed at the non-disabled and disabled; consequently, this study contributes to the commercialization of an online customizing system for men's suits specializing in serving wheelchair users.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.169-175
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• 2014

In this study, it is intended to provide a slip detector is an important function in the research on the slip control can be addressed uncontrollably path withdrawal might during driving of the power wheelchair, slip phenomenon occurs. By detecting and electric wheelchairs, the state of the motor during running, the detection of the slip, slip detection information calculated using an encoder that is connected to the left and right motor with six-axis IMU sensor for the electric wheelchair using an algorithm to calculate the slip ratio. Slip rate calculated in this way is used as control variable for improving the safety of the electric wheelchair. It was confirmed from the slip phenomenon of the path the proposed experiments slim detector proposed in this study. The maximum slip ratio detection zone during the experiment, can occur during turning of the electric wheelchair has been confirmed.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.7-15
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• 2017

Purpose: The Korean government has implemented a Barrier Free Certification System since 2008 to create a secure and convenient environment for the socially disadvantaged. The drastic increase in the number of BF-certification facilities is expected due to the revision of the system and increasing the number of certification institutions. An analysis of individual evaluation items needs to be made for the BF-Certification with public confidence. Method: Korean standard, International Standard(ISO/FDIS 21542, 2011), German Standard(DIN 18040-1, 2010), Austrian Standard(${\ddot{O}}NORM$ B 1600, 2017) and Swiss Standard(Norm SIA 500 / SN 521 500, 2009) were investigated and analyzed. A comprehensive improvement plan is proposed by comparing details of the aforementioned standards and the evaluation items of BF-Certification. Results: Many problems arise in applying existing Barrier-free standards due to changes in population structure, environmental change and the use of powered wheelchairs. International standards are being improved to solve these problems. The korean standards also require improving of the Barrier Free Law and Certification System, which reflect these trends. In korean cases, standards such as the size of the doors (width and height), the Unobstructed Manoeuvring Space and Clear Space at the Latch side of the Door are required to improve standards in accordance with international standards. In addition, the expression of laws and evaluation items of BF-Certification should be clearly defined. And the application of visual contrast standards for the enhancement of perceptions presented in international standards should be considered. Implication: Barrier Free related legal standards and evaluation items of BF-Certification that are used in Korea are required to be revised in consideration of social and environmental changes. Comprehensive improvements should be made through detailed review.