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Purpose This study investigated the relationship between peripheral nerve conduction velocity (NCV) and balance performance in older adults with diabetes. Methods Twenty older adults with diabetes were recruited to evaluate the NCV of their lower limbs and balance performance. The balance assessments comprised the timed up and go (TUG) test, Berg balance scale (BBS), unipedal stance test (UST), multidirectional reach test (MDRT), maximum step length (MSL) test and quiet standing with eyes open and closed. The relationship between NCV and balance performance was evaluated by Pearson's correlation coefficients, and the balance performances of the diabetic patients with and without peripheral neuropathy were compared by using Mann-Whitney U tests. Results The NCV in the lower limbs exhibited a moderate to strong correlation with most of the balance tests including the TUG (r = -0.435 to -0.520, p 0.05), BBS (r = 0.406-0.554, p 0.05), UST (r = 0.409-0.647, p 0.05) and MSL (r = 0.399-0.585, P 0.05). In addition, patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy had a poorer TUG (p 0.05), BBS (p 0.01), UST (p 0.05) and MSL performance (p 0.05) compared with those without peripheral neuropathy (p 0.05). Conclusion Our findings revealed that a decline in peripheral nerve conduction in the lower limb is not only an indication of nerve dysfunction, but may also be related to the impairment of balance performance in patients with diabetes. Implications for Rehabilitation Nerve conduction velocity in the lower limbs of diabetic older adults showed moderate to strong correlations with most of the results of balance tests, which are commonly used in clinics. Decline in nerve conduction velocity of the lower limbs may be related to the impairment of balance control in patients with diabetes. Diabetic older adults with peripheral neuropathy exhibited greater postural instability than those without peripheral neuropathy.

[Purpose] The introduction of emerging technologies such as the wireless Blobo bluetooth ball with multimedia features can enhance wrist physical therapy training, making it more fun and enhancing its effects. [Methods] Wrist injuries caused by fatigue at work, improper exercise, and other conditions are very common. Therefore, the reconstruction of wrist joint function is an important issue. The efficacy of a newly developed integrated wrist joint rehabilitation game using a Blobo bluetooth ball with C# software installed was tested in wrist rehabilitation (Flexion, Extension, Ulnar Deviation, Radial Deviation). [Results] Eight subjects with normal wrist function participated in a test of the system's stability and repeatability. After performing the Blobo bluetooth ball wrist physical therapy training, eight patients with wrist dysfunction experienced approximately 10° improvements in range of motion (ROM) of flexion extension, and ulnar deviation and about 6° ROM improvement in radial deviation. The subjects showed progress in important indicators of wrist function. [Conclusion] This study used the Blobo bluetooth ball in wrist physical therapy training and the preliminary results were encouraging. In the future, more diverse wrist or limb rehabilitation games should be developed to meet the needs of physical therapy training.

[Purpose] Stroke and other cerebrovascular diseases are major causes of adult mobility problems. Because stroke immobilizes the affected body part, balance training uses the healthy body part to complete the target movement. The muscle utilization rate on the stroke affected side is often reduced which further hinders affected side functional recovery in rehabilitation. [Subjects and Methods] This study tested a newly-developed interactive device with two force plates to measuring right and left side centers of pressure, to establish its efficacy in the improvement of the static standing ability of patients with hemiplegia. An interactive virtual reality game with different side reaction ratios was used to improve patient balance. The feasibility of the proposed approach was experimentally demonstrated. [Results] Although the non-affected-side is usually used to support the body weight in the standing position, under certain circumstances the patients could switch to using the affected side. A dramatic improvement in static standing balance control was achieved in the eyes open condition. [Conclusion] The proposed dual force plate technique used in this study separately measured the affected and non-affected-side centers of pressure. Based on this approach, different side ratio integration was achieved using an interactive game that helped stroke patients improve balance on the affected side. Only the patient who had suffered stroke relatively recently benefited significantly. The proposed technique is of little benefit for patients whose mobility has stagnated to a certain level.

In the research, a robot with gait and posture training functions is developed as an interactive balance rehabilitation training system for balance control impaired people to use. The system uses an action control tool with braking and monitoring functions to obtain the dynamic posture and gravity position of the body of the trainee, followed by subsequent process with software which is developed and designed completely to generate related feedback instructions for the trainee. Moreover, the instructions are presented in image, audio and tactile feedback manners, such that the trainee is provided with multiple message instructions to perform training activities according to the action request actually. Clinically, the research may provide training contents oriented according to task need. Compared to the decomposed action approach emphasized in conventional rehabilitation, it does allow the trainee to focus on the activity and obtains more significant effect. Furthermore, the goal of falling prevention function is also achievable after trained by the robot with gait and posture training functions developed in the research.

Wrist diseases, also known as “mama hand”, “mouse hand” or “keyboard hand”, are commonly seen and easily overlooked symptoms in daily life. The diseases are mostly related to incorrect exercise or excessive force imposed on hands, leading to tenosynovitis or carpal tunnel syndrome. To alleviate the symptoms or even to recover, besides drug treatment, supplementary rehabilitation training is necessary. The rehabilitation process forces the affected wrist area to continually exercise in order to stimulate the self-repair signals sent to the affected area for partial restoration, if not all, of the supposed functions. In modern world, using information technology to improve the rehabilitation environment with better approaches has become a trend. In this study, software programs coded in C# and Flash are developed to work on the Bluetooth ball hardware to facilitate the rehabilitation. The basic principle is to use the reaction from the Bluetooth ball’s swaying or swinging to drive the movement of the objects on the computer screen, making the supposedly boring rehabilitation much more fun and vivid in the interactive multimedia environment, thus gaining better treatment effect. Also, RFID, Internet and databases can be integrated into this facility to provide patient identification and data storage for references in making rehabilitation training programs.

Daily life movements such as standing, walking, and jumping need balance ability to achieve. Good balance control is closely related to the body stability and its development. According to medical research, people showing dizziness after taking drugs may have their balance ability substantially affected, and are more likely to fall, especially true to the elderly. This study proposes the combination of Kinect with virtual reality to build an information platform of interactive scenarios, for practices and evaluation on balance ability. Based on the indicators of balance ability, this platform sets out various training activities to improve the balance ability, making the supposedly boring process fun and vivid for a much better training purposes. Also, according to literatures, training with gaming patterns results in 30% reduction of falls. What’s more, this type of training can have the data, like time of use, scores, and joint postures, recorded and sent through network to databases on remote computer servers. The data collected from this platform can be sorted and analyzed, and the results can then be used to evaluate the performance of the balance training, and referenced for follow-up planning in the future.

Abnormal upper limb function seriously impacts a patient's daily life. After receiving emergency treatment patient should receive function-rebuilding and recovery training. The objective of this study is to integrate IR-camera, an infrared emitter, with a conventional passive hand skateboard training device for conventional upper limb training and the training process is comprehensively recorded and analyzed. Patients participating in the occupational therapy have a binding band attached to hand skateboard on the table to guide the patient in moving the hand skateboard along the designated path to train the patient's upper limbs. Six people with normal upper limb function participated in the stability test. The device repeatability and test results were verified acceptable. Eight patients with abnormal upper limb function (their upper limb function was damaged due to stroke, MMSEź>ź=27) were trained for 4 weeks. The patient scores in finishing rate and finishing time showed significant improvement. The paired T test results (satisfy pź

Whether a person’s upper limbs healthy or not will seriously impact his/her daily life. For those who have healthy, normal function of upper limbs or those who suffered from impairment but in the process of rehabilitation training, it is very important to remain appropriate, reasonable and moderate exercise to keep upper limbs functioning normally or in gradual recovery. This study use Kinect somatosensory device with Unity software to develop 3D situational games such as: “Shoulder finger ladder” and “Single curved shoulder”. The collected data from this training process can be uploaded via the internet to the cloud or server for participants to do self-inspection or it can be a reference for medical staffs to assess training effectiveness for those with impairments and planning in rehabilitation courses. In order to have more effective ways, researchers have imported games and virtual reality training effect to help those participants to train their upper limbs in a relaxed and extricated environment. In Shoulder finger ladder and Single curved shoulder training activities, the results of 8 subjects with normal upper limbs function represented that the system has good stability and reproducibility. And it also showed that motion of dominant side is more flexible than the non-dominant side. Flexibility and responsiveness in the elders are slightly behind the young. Another six weeks of training were held for subjects with frozen shoulder combined with Shoulder finger ladder and Single curved shoulder games. It showed that on the 3rd week, the average performances were stable. The T-test average score from 1–2 week and 3–4 weeks/5–6 weeks showed significant difference (P < 0.05).

In this research, we employ the technology of computer vision to recognize traffic light. We manipulate the color information of traffic light under HSI color space. And then, adding motor tracking technology, we can trap the traffic light which is subjected to a region of interest (ROI) to the center area of monitor. Meanwhile, we assign different frequency (peach) according to red light or green light to inform the people what state the light is. We develop the algorithm at PC with MATLAB. Then, we port the whole system to DSP platform TI TMS320 DM642 EVM. The result is that in the condition of non-complex environment, the system can distinguish the red light from green light, and also can output audio signal by means of speaker.

[Purpose] Upper extremity rehabilitation after an injury is very important. This study proposes radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to improve and enhance the effectiveness of the upper extremity rehabilitation. [Subjects and Methods] People use their upper extremities to conduct daily activities. When recovering from injuries, many patients neglect the importance of rehabilitation, which results in degraded function. This study recorded the training process using the traditional rehabilitation hand gliding cart with a RFID reader, RFID tags in the panel, and a servo host computer. [Results] Clinical evidence, time taken to achieve a full score, counts of missing the specified spots, and Brunnstrom stage of aided recovery, the proximal part of the upper extremity show that the RFID-based upper extremity training significantly and reduce negative impacts of the disability in daily life and activities. [Conclusion] This study combined a hand-gliding cart with an RFID reader, and when patients moved the cart, the movement could be observed via the activated RFID tags. The training data was collected and quantified for a better understanding of the recovery status of the patients. Each of the participating patients made progress as expected.

This study describes an eyeglass-type infrared-based communication board for the nonspeaking with quadriplegia.This system is composed of four major components: a headset, an infrared transmitting module, an infrared receiving/signal-processing module, and a main controller, the Intel-8951 microprocessor. This design concept was based on the use of an infrared remote module fastened to the eyeglasses which could allow the convenient control of the input motion on the keys of a communication board, which are all modified with infrared receiving/signal-processing modules. For system evaluation, 12 subjects (all men, 21-45 years old, six normal subjects as the control group and six nonspeaking with quadriplegia as the experimental group) were recruited.The average accuracy of the control group and the experimental group were 93.1 +/- 4.3% and 89.7 +/- 5.5%, respectively. The average time cost of the control group and the experimental group were 78.3 +/- 8.7 s and 89.9 +/- 10.2 s, respectively. An independent t-test revealed that the differences in the average accuracy and the average time cost of the control group and the experimental group were not significant (p0.05).The increase of opportunity to communicate using the infrared-based communication board would help people with multiple disabilities to socialize actively.

A knee locker with closed-loop functional electrical stimulation (FES) system has been developed to prevent the quadriceps weakness and the drop-foot of the hemiplegia during gait training.The FES system is triggered by a footswitch on the heel of the disabled foot to stimulate the tibialis anterior muscle for dorsi-flexion and to turn-off the knee locker in the swing phase through the main controller. Besides, the footswitch on the heel of the affected-side can be used to stimulate the quadriceps and to turn-on the knee locker for quadriceps weakness in the stance phase.It is revealed that the mean velocity, cadence, stride length, active ankle motion range, and functional ambulation category (FAC) have improved significantly from 0.15 +/- 0.04 m sec( - 1), 43.3 +/- 15.4 steps min( - 1), 0.36 +/- 0.11 m, 15 degrees, level 2 to 0.43 +/- 0.21 m sec( - 1), 69.4 +/- 19.1 steps min( - 1), 0.73 +/- 0.17 m, 40 degrees, level 4 respectively for the patient. A paired t-test indicated that differences in the electromyography (EMG) of the tibialis anterior and the quadriceps muscles between patient's disabled (affected-side) foot and normal (unaffected-side) foot are not significant (p0.05) after 16 weeks of training.It is concluded that this new knee locker with closed-loop FES system is capable of providing the hemiplegia with restoration to regular walking after appropriate gait training.

This paper proposes the development of a surface electromyographic (SEMG)-controlled telephone interface for the disabled. The system is composed of three major components: (1) a SEMG receiving/signal-processing module; (2) a row-column scanning interface for the telephone dialling pad; and (3) a main controller, the Intel-8951 microprocessor. The design concept was based on the idea of using a SEMG generated by the disabled and converting it into a trigger pulse. This could allow convenient control of the dialing motion in the row-column scanning keys of a telephone dialling pad. People with disabilities are competent for certain kinds of work such as being a telephone operator. The increase of opportunities to perform a job for the disabled would help them live independently.

This paper reports on the development of an eyeglass- type infrared (IR)-controlled computer interface for the disabled. This system may serve to assist those who suffer from spinal cord injuries or other handicaps to operate a computer. This system is comprised of three major components: 1) an infrared transmitting module, 2) an infrared receiving/signal-processing module, and 3) a main controller, the Intel-8951 microprocessor. The infrared transmitting module utilizes tongue-touch circuitry which is converted to an infrared beam and a low power laser (0.1 mW) beam. The infrared receiving/signal-processing module, receives the infrared beam and fine tunes the unstable infrared beam into standard pulses which are used as control signals. The main controller is responsible for detecting the input signals from the infrared receiving/signal-processing module and verifying these signals with the mapping table in its memory. After the signal is verified, it is released to control the keys of the computer keyboard and mouse interface. This design concept was mainly based on the idea that the use of an infrared remote module fastened to the eyeglasses could allow the convenient control of the input motion on the keys of a computer keyboard and mouse which are all modified with infrared receiving/signal-processing modules. The system is designed for individuals with spinal cord injuries and disabled in which the subjects' movement are severely restricted. The infrared transmitting module can be easily mounted on eyeglasses or artificial limbs.

This study evaluated the effects of interactive video-game based (IVGB) training on the balance of older adults. The participants of the study included 30 community-living persons over the age of 65. The participants were divided into 2 groups. Group A underwent IVGB training for 6 weeks and received no intervention in the following 6 weeks. Group B received no intervention during the first 6 weeks and then participated in training in the following 6 weeks. After IVGB intervention, both groups showed improved balance based on the results from the following tests: the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Modified Falls Efficacy Scale (MFES), Timed Up and Go (TUG) test, and the Sway Velocity (SV) test (assessing bipedal stance center pressure with eyes open and closed). Results from the Sway Area (SA) test (assessing bipedal stance center pressure with eyes open and closed) revealed a significant improvement in Group B after IVGB training. Group A retained some training effects after 6 weeks without IVGB intervention. Additionally, a moderate association emerged between the Xavix measured step system stepping tests and BBS, MFES, Unipedal Stance test, and TUG test measurements. In conclusion, IVGB training improves balance after 6 weeks of implementation, and the beneficial effects partially remain after training is complete. Further investigation is required to determine if this training is superior to traditional physical therapy.

After stroke happened, central nervous system (CNS) damage causes not only drop foot, but also upper extremity limit when the patient is walking. Drop foot causes the pain on the patient's legs, and furthermore, it may make the patient fall down. The general way to treat is to equip the patient with ankle foot orthoses or commit Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) on the drop foot. However, CVA patient treatment lacks of upper extremity when the upper extremity training is applied. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to integrate two electrical channel stimulator to improve CVA patients' bad walking posture coming from drop foot and upper extremity swing limit. This system provides a hardware control interface and a gait stimulation timing control unit. The two-channel electrical stimulator's source is Trio-300 and the system controller core is Pic18F4520. The foot switch detects patients' steps to control FES output. By FES, controlling the patients' extremity could improve CVA patient walking safety and extremity balance.

In nowadays' medical care, needle-stick injury accounts for a great proportion in all of the accidents. For example when doctors and nurses do the acts of medical treatment, or when relevant personnel dispose of the medical wastes, it is a high probability that they are injured by the used syringe needle. Because there is a serious potential fatal crisis in the accidents of needle-stick injury, for example, the diseases infected by blood such as hepatitis, AIDS, syphilis, etc. may infect the relevant doctors and nurses through the used syringe needle, it indeed causes a great damage. The statistical analysis also indicates that the main cause of the accident of needle-stick injury is the medical personnel's chronic action of "recovering" the needle after injection. Such carelessness of this action may cause accidents. The paper aims at applying the electronic technique to the needling instrument for the purpose of detaching the needle automatically, i.e. an action that can detach the used needles from the syringe and then collect respectively. Thus, it can effectively avoid the accident of needle-stick injury or even the case of serious infection when "recovering" the needle.

A feedback control functional electrical stimulation (FES) system was proposed to prevent quadriceps weakness and drop-foot of the hemiplegia during gait training. The FES system is triggered by a footswitch on the heel of the affected foot to stimulate the tibialis anterior muscle for dorsi-flexion and to turn-off the knee locker in the swing phase through the main controller. The footswitch on the heel of the affected-side can be used to stimulate the quadriceps and turn-on the knee locker for quadriceps weakness in the stance phase. It was revealed that the mean velocity, cadence, stride length, active ankle motion range and functional ambulation category (FAC) were significantly improved. A paired t-test indicated that the differences in the electromyography (EMG) of the tibialis anterior and the quadriceps muscles between patient’s affected foot and unaffected foot were not significant (p>0.05) after 16 weeks of training. The proposed knee locker device with closed-loop FES system is capable of providing a hemiplegic patient with regular walking restoration after appropriate gait training.

This research proposed an eyeglass-type infrared-based home appliance control system for spinal cord injured (SCI) with tetraplegia.This system is composed of four major components: A headset, an infrared transmitting module, an infrared receiving/signal-processing module, and a main controller, the Intel-8951 microprocessor. This design concept was based on the use of an infrared remote module fastened to the eyeglasses that could allow the convenient control of the input motion on the keys of a remote controller of a home appliance which are all modified with infrared receiving/signal-processing modules. For system evaluation, 12 subjects (4 male, 8 female, 26- 47-years-old were recruited. Six persons without disabilities were in the control group and 6 with SCI with tetraplegia formed the experimental group.The average accuracy of the control group and the experimental group are 88.8 +/- 10.6% and 85.9 +/- 14.3%, respectively. The average time cost of the control group and the experimental group are 57.2 +/- 8.1 sec and 66.6 +/- 12.3 sec, respectively. An independent t-test revealed that the differences in the average accuracy and the average time cost of the control group and the experimental group are not significant (p0.05).Using the novel home appliance control system not only provided the advantages of convenience, accuracy and sanitation for people with disabilities but it also helped them to live more independently.

In this study, a patient-driven loop control in a non-invasive functional electrical stimulation (FES) system was designed to restore ambulation function of stroke patients with their residual capabilities.

Digital TV becomes a part of ordinary family life. Comparing to the traditional TV, the digital one provides better picture quality and interactive functionalities instead of just receiving one-way programs. In common families, TV takes higher generality than computers and other mobile devices. In these mentioned devices, TV is the simplest one to operate. Because of such advantages, there are many opportunities and chances in the digital TV industry. For archiving better performance on digital learning, it is necessary for integrating quiz and testing components with current e-learning systems. It is the best way to arise the learning efficiency by checking studentspsila learning achievements using test mechanism and correcting the wrong answers they made. The purpose of this paper is to develop a QTI-based Assessment Platform compliant with MHP standard on Digital TV. By this framework, users can examine how much they have learned by tests on TV and discover subjects which they are not familiar. Another objective of using TV as a tool for learning behavior is to lower threshold of domain knowledge of technologies since watching TV is a simple behavior in peoplespsila daily life.

The motivation of this research is to improve the ability of ambulation for people with a certain degree of disability. The control of the wheelchair is using two tilt sensors as an input-controlling module. One of the tilt sensors detects the anterior/posterior tilting of the head and moves the wheelchair forward/backward, the other distinguishes the left/right swing of the head. In order to increase the safety of this system, the M3S protocol established by the European Commission is also applied to this research. The system based on M3S protocol has the advantage of real-time signal transmission and emergent status monitoring for SCI patients with C2-C4 level. N the past the assistant device was designed with a unique connection, whereas a single input device was connected to a single output device which had neglected integral significance. These devices were not completely compatible with each other and had a rather poor integrated safety system. Furthermore, owing to severe degree disabilities who were quadriplegic from a cervical cord injury and had retained the ability to rotate their neck, were unable to switch arbitrarily between each connecting device by themselves, these one-to -one connected mechanism were not suitable for them. Therefore, it was extremely urgent to invent a connected interface and a simple input device for people with disabilities to operate in their wheelchair. In order to integrate different kinds of device and improve the facility of operation, Multiple Master Multiple Slave (M3S) is intelligent interface developed from European Community (EC) programs and individual people in the 90s. M3S protocol provides the standard interface between the input device and output device. A M3S system is based on the bus and devices. The bus of M3S contains three parts: 2 lines for digital communication (Controller Area Network bus, CAN bus), 2 lines for power distribution (Power bus) and 2 lines for safety features (Safety bus).

The study is aimed at establishing a neural network + PID feedback control FES (functional electrical stimulation) system used for adjusting the optimum electrical stimulating current to control the motion of an ankle joint. The proposed method further improves the drop-foot problem existing with hemiplegia patients.

The motivation of this research is to improve the ability of ambulation for people with a certain degree of disability. The control method is using two tilt sensors as an input-controlling module. One of the tilt sensors detects the anterior/posterior tilting of the head and moves the wheelchair or mouse cursor forward/backward, the other distinguishes the left/right swing of the head. In order to increase the safety of this system, the M3S protocol established by the European Commission is also applied to this research. The system based on M3S protocol has the advantage of real-time monitoring for people with severe disabilities.

A novel laser Doppler flowmetry scheme is reported that adjusts the processing bandwidth adaptively to optimise the estimation of flow. To obtain an adequate processing bandwidth, the Doppler spectra is first fitted to the Lorentzian function, and the bandwidth at half the maximum of the Lorentzian function is used as an indicator of the major frequency range of the signal. The processing bandwidth is then tuned accordingly, and a frequency-weighted algorithm is applied to compute the fluid velocity. To investigate the influence of the processing bandwidth, an in vitro experiment was performed. In the experiment, the flow rate was controlled at constant velocity in the range from 0 to 18.52 mm s(-1), and the fluid velocity indices were calculated using adaptive and fixed processing bandwidths, respectively. The results showed that the adaptive processing bandwidth adjustment, not only significantly reduced the biological zero (9.6% of the case using 100 kHz bandwidth), but also enhanced the sensitivity of the laser Doppler measurement (over 20%) and linearly responded to a wider velocity range (R2 = 0.979 for velocity from 0 to 18.52 mm s(-1)).

This study is aimed at establishing a neural network and fuzzy feedback control FES system used for adjusting the optimum electrical stimulating current to control the motion of an ankle joint. The proposed method further improves the drop-foot problem existing in hemiplegia patients. The proposed system includes both hardware and software. The hardware system determines the patient's ankle joint angle using a position sensor located in the patient's affected side. This sensor stimulates the tibialis anterior with an electrical stimulator that induces the dorsiflexion action and achieves the ideal ankle joint trace motion. The software system estimates the stimulating current using a neural network. The fuzzy controller solves the nonlinear problem by compensating the motion trace errors between the neural network control and actual system. The control qualities of various controllers for four subjects were compared in the clinical test. It was found that both the root mean square error and the mean error were minimal when using the neural network and fuzzy controller. The drop-foot problem in hemiplegic's locomotion was effectively improved by incorporating the neural network and fuzzy controller with the functional electrical simulator.

This study proposes a new head-orientated wheelchair design for people with disabilities. This study involves a tilt sensor module fitted onto the operator's headgear that will sense head movements used to control the wheelchair's direction and speed.

A computer-assisted and foot switch controlled functional electrical stimulation (FES) system was developed to present to walking subject real-time stimulating to their muscle during gait training. The FES was controlled by foot switch placed on the heel of unaffected foot and as a trigger to stimulate the muscles of the affected side. The purpose was to compare the effectiveness of this new developed system to a focused program of physical therapy for gait. Twelve hemiplegic patients were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (n=6) treated with the new developed FES system or a control group (n=6) treated with conventional physical therapy program. Gait analysis was obtained prior to and following every type of treatment. Stride length, walking velocity and functional ambulation category (FAC) were greatly increased in experimental group. A paired t-test revealed that differences in electromyography (EMG) of quadriceps and tibialis anterior muscles between patients' affected and unaffected sides were not significant after four-months training. It is concluded that a treadmill apparatus with a computer-assisted FES system controlled by foot switch is an effective tool for retraining gait in stroke patients.

A new infrared-controlled keyboard instead of the conventional computer keyboard was developed for those with hand dysfunction. The infrared transmitter with laser director was placed on the eyeglasses, and the keys of the conventional computer keyboard were all replaced by infrared receivers. In the infrared receivers we designed a modulized circuit to receive, demodulate and process the infrared signals. The modulized circuit used signal processing technique to convert the astable signal of the infrared receiver to a standard pulse train which could be used as control signal easily.

This research reports on the development of a headset-type position sensors-controlled computer mouse for the disabled. This system may serve to assist those who suffer from spinal cord injuries or other handicaps to operate a computer. This system is composed of three major components: (A) the position sensor module; (B) the signal-processing module; and (C) a main controller, the Intel-8951 microprocessor. This concept of design is mainly based on the idea that the use of the position sensor module fastened to the headset could allow the convenient control of the operation of a computer mouse. Through this system, the disabled are competent for some types of work, such as a computer operator. The increase of opportunity to do a job for the disabled would help them live independently.

Although sacral anterior root neuromodulation (SARN) has proven to be effective in patients with neurogenic bladder, it is not widely accepted due to the need to conduct a dorsal rhizotomy, and commercially available SARN devices are not usually equipped with a closed-loop controller for the automatic regulation of bladder functions. Therefore, there is still a need for a more effective electrical neuromodulation scheme to restore bladder function. Intravesical pressure (IVP) is the major biosignal that reflects the state of bladder conditions. The present study develops a closed-loop control strategy for improving bladder emptying and verifies its performance using animal experiments. Two channel outputs of electrical currents triggered by IVP-feedback signals were set to automatically regulate a rat's pudendal nerve for selective nerve stimulation and blocking. Under this experimental design, a series of in vivo animal experiments were conducted on anesthetized rats, including the computational characterization of biosignals, the development of an intermittent high-frequency blocking current waveform for blocking the nerve, and verification of the control strategy. Results show that the IVP-feedback control strategy for dual-channel pudendal neuromodulation performed well in animal experiments and could be utilized to selectively stimulate and block the pudendal nerve to augment bladder contraction and restore external urethral sphincter bursting activity to improve bladder emptying. This study demonstrates the feasibility of the IVP-based feedback-control strategy with animal experiments. The results could provide a basis for developing a sophisticated neural prosthesis for restoring bladder function in clinical use or for neurophysiological study.

This study describes the motivation and the design considerations of an economical head-operated computer mouse. In addition, it focuses on the invention of a head-operated computer mouse that employs two tilt sensors placed in the headset to determine head position and to function as simple head-operated computer mouse. One tilt sensor detects the lateral head-motion to drive the left/right displacement of the mouse. The other one detects the head's vertical motion to move up and down with respect to the displacement of the mouse. A touch switch device was designed to contact gently with operator's cheek. Operator may puff his cheek to trigger the device to perform single click, double clicks, and drag commands. This system was invented to assist people with disabilities to live an independent professional life.

A closed-loop functional electrical stimulation (FES) system is developed to provide hemiplegic patients with a real-time stimulation to their muscles to prevent the drop-foot and the quadriceps weakness from happening during gait training. The FES is controlled by position sensors (ps) and triggered by footswitches (f) with real-time feedback. As the FES receives the signals from these sensors, it adjusts and outputs an optimum set of stimulation parameters automatically. One hemiplegic patient was recruited to conduct clinical evaluation and treated by using the new closed-loop FES system. It was revealed that the mean velocity, cadence, stride length, active ankle motion range, and functional ambulation category (FAC) improved significantly from 0.12 +/- 0.07 ms-1, 40.3 +/- 18.3 steps min-1, 0.35 +/- 0.10 m, 15 degrees, level 2 to 0.42 +/- 0.23 ms-1, 68.2 +/- 19.0 steps min-1, 0.70 +/- 0.22 m, 40 degrees, level 4 respectively for the patient. A paired t-test indicated that differences in the electromyography (EMG) of the tibialis anterior and the quadriceps muscles between the patient's disabled (affected side) foot and normal (unaffected side) foot are not significant (p > 0.05) after 12 weeks of training. It is concluded that this new closed-loop FES system is capable of providing this hemiplegic patient with restoration to regular walking after appropriate gait training. Future studies, including randomized-controlled study, should be implemented to document the efficacy of this system.