• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.260-267
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• 2018

Surface electromyography (sEMG) is mainly used as an on/off switch in the early stage of the study and was then expanded to navigational control of powered-wheelchairs and recognition of sign language or finger gestures. There are difficulties in communication between people who know and do not know sign language; therefore, many efforts have been made to recognize sign language or finger gestures. Recently, use of sEMG signals to recognize sign language signals have been investigated; however, most studies of this topic conducted to date have focused on Chinese finger number gestures. Since sign language and finger gestures vary among regions, Korean- and Chinese-finger number gestures differ from each other. Accordingly, the recognition performance of Korean finger number gestures based on sEMG signals can be severely degraded if the same muscles are specified as for Chinese finger number gestures. However, few studies of Korean finger number gestures based on sEMG signals have been conducted. Thus, this study was conducted to identify potential forearm muscles from which to collect sEMG signals for Korean finger number gestures. To accomplish this, six Korean finger number gestures from number zero to five were investigated to determine the usefulness of the proposed muscles and electrode placements by showing that CNN technique based on sEMG signal after sufficient learning recognizes six Korean finger number gestures in accuracy of 100%.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.419-427
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• 2020

This study was undertaken to address the difficulties and inconveniences of an electric wheelchair. We focused on improving usability of initially completed products by augmenting the prototypes designed in the previous study. For evaluation of usability, 10 elderly women aged over 65 years, capable of movements and physical activities in daily life, were enrolled as subjects. The experimental method included a subjective satisfaction questionnaire evaluation of the elderly women using the target product, and the observation evaluation was achieved using video recording data, etc. Usability evaluation revealed that the elevating sector requires improvement of intuition through separation of the elevating control panel and the driving control panel. Improvements in the driving sector include corrections of the front wheel mechanism or driving control algorithm, UI, and sudden stop system. Transferring section assessment revealed a necessity to secure structures and add structures that support power. We believe that based on the inconveniences and improvements presented in the usability evaluation, appending the existing prototype with complementary products will improve the quality of life of elderly women with limited mobility.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.45-54
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• 2020

This study investigated basic data on walking characteristics, including walking speed and cognitive-response for the elderly, and based on these, the time of walking signal was calculated. The on-site survey examined the actual pedestrian crossing speed using a stopwatch, and the age was divided into groups of ordinary people and the elderly. Analysis of the data showed that the average walking speed for the general public was 1.29 m/s, while the average walking speed for the elderly was 1.13 m/s, higher than that of the general public. In addition, the lower speed of the 15th percentile was analyzed to 1.01 m/s for the general population and 0.85 m/s for the elderly, showing a lower walking speed than the standard for the general area and 0.8 m/s for the protected area. However, for senior citizens who use walking sticks or wheelchairs, the speed of the lower 15th-percentile is 0.73 m/s, which is lower than the current standard of protected areas, according to the analysis.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.33-39
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• 2013

When the eldery with limited mobility and disabled use a wheelchairs to move, it can cause decreased exercise ability like decline muscular strength in upper limb and lower extremities. The disabled people suffers with spinal cord injuries or post stroke hemiplegia are easily exposed to secondary problems due to limited mobility. In this paper, We designed intelligent wheelchair robot system for upper limb and lower extremities exercise/rehabilitation considering the characteristics of these severely disabled person. The system consists of an electric wheelchair, biometrics module for Identification characteristics of users, upper limb and lower extremities rehabilitation. In this paper, describes the design and configurations and of developed robot. Also, In order to verify the system function, conduct performance evaluation targeting non-disabled about risk context analysis with biomedical signal change and upper limb and lower extremities rehabilitation over wheelchair robot move. Consequently, it indicate sufficient tracking performance for rehabilitation as at about 86.7% average accuracy for risk context analysis and upper limb angle of 2.5 and lower extremities angle of 2.3 degrees maximum error range of joint angle.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.90-95
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• 2014

The researchs using brain-computer interface, the new interface system which connect human to macine, have been maded to implement the user-assistance devices for control of wheelchairs or input the characters. In recent researches, there are several trials to implement the speech recognitions system based on the brain wave and attempt to silent communication. In this paper, we studied how to extract features of vowel based on international phonetic alphabet (IPA), as a foundation step for implementing of speech recognition system based on electroencephalogram (EEG). We conducted the 2 step experiments with three healthy male subjects, and first step was speaking imagery with single vowel and second step was imagery with successive two vowels. We selected 32 channels, which include frontal lobe related to thinking and temporal lobe related to speech function, among acquired 64 channels. Eigen value of the signal was used for feature vector and support vector machine (SVM) was used for classification. As a result of first step, we should use over than 10th order of feature vector to analyze the EEG signal of speech and if we used 11th order feature vector, the highest average classification rate was 95.63 % in classification between /a/ and /o/, the lowest average classification rate was 86.85 % with /a/ and /u/. In the second step of the experiments, we studied the difference of speech imaginary signals between single and successive two vowels.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.40 no.12
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• pp.1067-1076
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• 2016

This paper describes the development of a hybrid-powered wheelchair (HPW) for the elderly. The proposed HPW has novel mechanical and control features compared with conventional powered wheelchairs. An ergonomic back-braking mechanism was designed in order to stop the wheels easily. In terms of control features, the HPW remarkably reduces the muscle power required by combining various assistive functions, such as wheel torque assistance, friction/inertia compensation, gravity compensation, and the one-hand driving algorithm. For wheel torque assistance, strain gauges were attached to the hand-rim in order to measure the wheel torque applied by a human. Gyroscopes and an accelerometer were attached to the wheel and chair respectively for friction and inertia compensation. An inclinometer was attached for gravity compensation and the one-hand driving algorithm was included for patients who can only use one hand. The one-hand driving algorithm controls the angular velocity of the uncontrolled wheel by using a gyroscope and pressure sensors attached to the bottom of the seat. Finally, the performance of the proposed motion assisted algorithm was verified through various experiments.

• 한국노년학
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.1163-1177
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• 2010

This study was conducted to establish the appropriate facilities criteria of the Korean welfare devices center. We e-mail surveyed 194 welfare devices centers and analysed 13 blueprints of them. We established the following proper principles of facilities. First, consist type and area of room should depend on the type of welfare devices centers. Second, The flow of human and welfare devices should be simple. Third, the area calculated on the base of intent of center owner and the size of beds, wheelchairs, etc. Fourth, exhibit room facing with roadside may obtain advertising effect. Fifth, the storage and disinfecting room should use different entrance, and avoid the intersection of flow to prevent cross-contamination. Sixth, the access road to the exhibition and consulting room should be able to approach by the wheelchair. seventh, office room should be invisible to keep customer's privacy. Direct Cleaning-disinfecting type center on the premise that the maximum 165m², middle 150m², intermediate 140m², display at least Consultation, Cleaning-disinfecting room, storage (clean, contaminated), the office, equipped with a parking space. Entrust Cleaning-disinfecting type center on the premise that a maximum 134m², middle 119m², intermediate 109m² exhibited minimal activity room, consultation room, office, equipped with a parking space, collecting welfare when importing equipment warehouse (clean, pollution) have been proposed to equip up to.

• The Journal of the Korean Institute of Forest Recreation
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.59-69
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• 2018

This is a cross-sectional study that suggests ways to activate forest welfare services (FWS) by investigating the infrastructure, service status, and perception on FWS in Korea. In August 2016, a structured email survey was conducted in nation widely. The respondents were mostly directors and general secretary (75.0%). The considerable number (16.3%) of nursing homes (NH) use some floors of the complex buildings that would be difficult to have FWS infrastructure and about 30% of those without forests near the facilities. The directors of NH recognize that FWS has positive effects on the elderly. However, FWS is not an requisite of the longterm care insurance benefit, and so costly and effort-intensive that FWS has not been activated so far. In order to activate FWS in NHs, it is necessary to develop and disseminate the guidelines on FWS that anyone can easily followed. In addition, when the National Health Insurance Corporation evaluates NHs, they should evaluate not only whether there is a wandering or walking space, but also whether it has forest healing factors such as forests. It is also necessary to create a barrier-free environment both inside and outside of NHs, increasing accessibility to the toilet in gardens, paving a passage for wheelchairs and lifts in forests near NHs. Through these efforts, it is expected that FWS will be activated to provide physical, mental rest and comfort, appropriate cognitive stimulation to the NH residents at the end of life.