Usability Evaluation of a Novel Robotic Power Wheelchair for Indoor and Outdoor Navigation.

Objective: To compare the Mobility Enhancement roBotic (MEBot) wheelchair's capabilities with commercial electric-powered wheelchairs (EPWs) by performing a systematic usability evaluation.
Design: Usability in effectiveness, efficacy, and satisfaction was evaluated using quantitative measures. A semistructured interview was employed to gather feedback about the users' interaction with MEBot.
Setting: Laboratory testing of EPW driving performance with 2 devices in a controlled setting simulating common EPW driving tasks.
Participants: A convenience sample of expert EPW users (N=12; 9 men, 3 women) with an average age of 54.7±10.9 years and 16.3± 8.1 years of EPW driving experience.
Interventions: Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures: Powered mobility clinical driving assessment (PMCDA), Satisfaction Questionnaire, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Task Load Index.
Results: Participants were able to perform significantly higher number of tasks (P=.004), with significantly higher scores in both the adequacy-efficacy (P=.005) and the safety (P=.005) domains of the PMCDA while using MEBot over curbs and cross-slopes. However, participants reported significantly higher mental demand (P=.005) while using MEBot to navigate curbs and cross-slopes due to MEBot's complexity to perform its mobility applications which increased user's cognitive demands.
Conclusions: Overall, this usability evaluation demonstrated that MEBot is a promising EPW device to use indoors and outdoors with architectural barriers such as curbs and cross-slopes. Current design limitations were highlighted with recommendations for further improvement.
(Copyright © 2018 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)