TY - GEN
T1 - Task-specific assistive device (TAD)
T2 - 2020 Design of Medical Devices Conference, DMD 2020
AU - Jayasree-Krishnan, Veena
AU - Ghosh, Shramana
AU - Spiegler, Jack
AU - Raghavan, Preeti
AU - Kapila, Vikram
N1 - Funding Information:
upper extremities [1–3] in patients. Upper extremities are vital for performing a variety of functional tasks such as eating, drinking, bathing, and dressing, which constitute activities of daily living (ADL). Thus, impairments in upper limbs affect patients’ ability to perform essential activities, making them dependent on caregivers. However, there is an increasing scarcity of caregivers to provide assistance for individuals suffering from the aforementioned disabilities. This impedes participation of patients in the normal social activities and ultimately leads to deterioration in their quality of life. Numerous prior studies have focused on varied types of assistive technology devices [4,5] to reduce the limitations of patients suffering from physical impairments, for example robotic manipulators [6], passive orthoses [7], active orthoses [8,9], etc. One robotic aid that is commercially available to support the ADL of eating is called ‘My Spoon’ [10], which is a meal-assist robot. A fork is attached to the five degree of freedom (DoF) manipulator of My Spoon device, which helps disabled individuals in eating food. The device has manual, semiautomatic, and automatic modes of operation. In addition to My Spoon, other robots available to assist with ADL include Handy 1 [11], ASIBOT [12], etc. In general, such commercially available assistive products are expensive, bulky, complex, difficult to maintain, and not portable [11–13]. This, along with the rising shortage of caregivers, suggests a growing urgency in the need to develop new, cost-effective, and viable functional assistive devices. Some researchers have explored the feasibility of substituting single DoF linkages [14,15] in place of complex This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under DRK-12 Grant DRL-1417769,§ RET Site Grant EEC-1542286,† and ITEST Grant DRL-1614085;† and NY Space Grant Consortium under Grant 76156-10488.†
Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under DRK-12 Grant DRL-1417769, RET Site Grant EEC-1542286, and ITEST Grant DRL-1614085; and NY Space Grant Consortium under Grant 76156-10488.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2020 ASME
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - The task-specific assistive device (TAD) is a compact and portable assistive device, consisting of an actuated six-bar linkage, designed to facilitate the activity of drinking from a cup without using the hands. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of the device in supporting patients with conditions of incomplete tetraplegia and hemiplegia by simulating disability in 17 healthy subjects. The average percentage reduction in bending angle of torso with the use of TAD was found to be 40.31% for subjects with simulated incomplete tetraplegia and 37.14% for subjects with simulated hemiplegia. Users also completed the system usability scale (SUS), indicating that the device was easy to use. The user workload, measured using the NASA task load index (NASA-TLX), was found to be minimal and the device was found to be robust through user response to a user experience questionnaire. The results of this work indicate that TAD is a promising solution for facilitating independence in a basic activity of daily living such as drinking from a cup without using the hands.
AB - The task-specific assistive device (TAD) is a compact and portable assistive device, consisting of an actuated six-bar linkage, designed to facilitate the activity of drinking from a cup without using the hands. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of the device in supporting patients with conditions of incomplete tetraplegia and hemiplegia by simulating disability in 17 healthy subjects. The average percentage reduction in bending angle of torso with the use of TAD was found to be 40.31% for subjects with simulated incomplete tetraplegia and 37.14% for subjects with simulated hemiplegia. Users also completed the system usability scale (SUS), indicating that the device was easy to use. The user workload, measured using the NASA task load index (NASA-TLX), was found to be minimal and the device was found to be robust through user response to a user experience questionnaire. The results of this work indicate that TAD is a promising solution for facilitating independence in a basic activity of daily living such as drinking from a cup without using the hands.
KW - Assistive device
KW - Disability
KW - Disability simulation
KW - Hemiplegia
KW - Incomplete tetraplegia
KW - NASA-TLX
KW - Six-bar linkage
KW - System usability scale
KW - Task-specific assistive device
KW - User experience questionnaire
KW - User study
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090690633&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85090690633&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1115/DMD2020-9047
DO - 10.1115/DMD2020-9047
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85090690633
T3 - Frontiers in Biomedical Devices, BIOMED - 2020 Design of Medical Devices Conference, DMD 2020
BT - Frontiers in Biomedical Devices, BIOMED - 2020 Design of Medical Devices Conference, DMD 2020
PB - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
Y2 - 6 April 2020 through 9 April 2020
ER -