Virtual Wheelchair Simulation

Dr. Wayne Carlson, Director of the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, and Don Stredney, of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, head the research team responsible for one of these eight projects. Titled "The Determination of Environmental Accessibility and User Proficiency through Virtual Simulation," this subproject proposes to examine human performance in negotiating barrier free environments through the use of computer generated virtual simulations. The project will be instrumental in defining standards for use in evaluating user proficiency, which will provide information for more suitable selections of enabling technology for the disabled. In addition, this research will demonstrate direct implications to the development of enabling technology through virtual testing and analysis, and provide improved methods for the design of barrier free environments.

This research project combines the expertise of researchers at The Ohio State University with the manufacturing knowledge of Invacare Corporation of Northern Ohio, the world's leading manufacturer of enabling technologies. Not only will this project provide essential information regarding the use and design of these technologies, but it will provide a system for training the users of such devices. In addition, the system developed for this project can be used by architects, developers, designers and builders to assure barrier free environments in order to assure unlimited access to these environments (public buildings, shopping malls, homes and offices, retail stores, etc) by the disabled.

The system which has been developed addresses the current lack of methods for evaluating a disabled person in order to match them with a suitable power wheelchair control mechanism. There are many ways to control a power wheelchair, including joysticks, halos, sip and puff interfaces, and muscle control actuators. Often, however, it is not clear which control mechanism is most appropriate for a given disabled person.

This system consists of an instrumented, joystick-driven power wheelchair connected to a high-performance graphics workstation; it simulates the actual speed and maneuverability of the particular wheelchair within a virtual structure. The display generates realistic interiors containing multiple light sources and surface textures, and is viewed in stereo through lightweight polarized glasses. The system maintains a hierarchical data structure which detects collisions between the virtual wheelchair and the environment.

The widespread use of power wheelchairs has greatly increased the accessibility of buildings and other architectural structures to handicapped persons. In addition, recent advances in microcomputer technology have made possible increasingly sophisticated wheelchair interfaces, such as halo, puff and sip, and muscle control mechanisms, which promise accessibility to an even larger portion of the handicapped population. Finally, the Americans with Disabilities Act Of 1990 requires handicapped accessibility for (almost) all public structures. With these points in mind we have developed a virtual structure prototyping system that allows a "walkthrough" for a person confined to a power wheelchair. The system is a tool for both architects and handicapped persons --- it both tests the structure for ADA compliance, and provides training and evaluation for the wheelchair user.

For further information, contact Don Stredney (don@osc.edu), or Wayne Carlson (waynec@accad.ohio-state.edu).