PROJECT IV – ACTIVITY AND STATUS MONITORING SYSTEM (DATA LOGGER)

The interviews, focus groups and observational trials in Project I and various surveys in Project II can provide important subjective information about how wheelchairs are used. These data are vital to understanding user perceptions, but data that is much more objective and ecologically representative of actual use can be collected by recording aspects of the wheelchair’s behavior over longer periods of time (for example, recording over days or weeks how far and how fast the wheelchair travels, how long the user is sitting in the wheelchair, the frequency of major jolts, etc). A data logger is a collection of sensors and a storage system attached to a wheelchair designed to perform these recordings.

Objectives
There are three specific objectives for this project.

Objective 1: To unify existing Canadian data logger projects to ensure that comparable data is collected by all data logging platforms, to share best practices for working with the data loggers, and to identify avenues for further development of data loggers.

Objective 2: To integrate data logging features into the smart wheelchair prototypes.

Objective 3: To investigate what data analyses might be performed onboard the wheelchair and how they could inform the operation of the smart wheelchair.

RESEARCH METHODS AND PLAN
Objective 1: Collaboration with existing data logger projects
Reconciliation of variability between data logger technologies:
Creation of an Internet-based data and document repository:
Objective 2: Integration of data logging features into the smart wheelchair prototypes
Objective 3: Onboard analysis of data to inform operation of the smart wheelchair