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With respect to alternative devices like traditional wheelchairs, handbikes can offer advantages from biomechanical and physiological perspectives, to several kinds of users. Assuring high mechanical efficiency and homogeneous force distributions along cycles, and being suitable for indoor and outdoor activities, these systems are used for rehabilitation, sports, and daily applications. From a technical perspective, their main characteristics can vary with the device final purpose and operational context. This review aims to provide an overall outline of handbikes in the literature from a general and comprehensive point of view, up until 2022. The analysis is performed (i) with a systematic approach, without a priori limitations on document type and content focus, and (ii) to identify the areas of interest for the scientific development of these systems. A systematic evaluation method for the identification and analysis of the documents was designed and implemented and the selection criteria, as well as the rationale for the procedure, are described. A specific taxonomy was defined and applied for the subsequent analysis, and each category is specifically evaluated and described, detailing the main outcomes of the literature analysis and relative discussion. Particular attention is paid to actuation strategies and propulsion efficiency. Finally, the main results of the work and future developments for handbikes are briefly synthesized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes an experimental method to estimate personalized inertial parameters of upper limbs during handcycling by using a planar dynamic model. The handle forces are expressed as a product of a matrix describing the kinematics terms and a vector of inertial parameters of arm and forearm. The parameters are estimated by measuring the handle forces during a suitable "passive test" and inverting the mentioned matrix. The data were acquired while an operator actuated the handle and the subject's muscles were relaxed. To validate the estimation procedure, it was applied to a custom-made artificial arm mechanism, and the results were compared with its known parameters. The method was then used to estimate the inertial parameters of 6 human subjects. The estimated parameters were used to compute the exchanged forces and compared with the measured ones obtaining an average error of 14% both for Fx and Fy. These errors are significantly smaller than those obtained using dynamic parameters extracted from the literature to compute the forces, which were 50% for Fx and 19% for Fy. An individual evaluation of inertial parameters better describes interaction forces during handcycling, especially for subjects whose body structures are different from the average population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]