• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.20-28
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• 2018

In this research, for the smooth cultural life of seniors, we recruit 92 smart seniors (male: 22, female: 70) and survey their preferred content sub-genre. The survey is mainly based on the two devices (PC, Smartphone) to be used. As a result of the study, there was a little difference in preference on the web pages between both devices, the video contents showed the similar preference, regardless of the device. Also, sub-genres surveyed show higher correlations with similar sub-genres in other content genres. So, If the result of this study is reflected in the development of cultural contents and the composition of content pages, it will be helpful for senior to enjoy the improved cultural life by lowering entry barriers accessing digital media contents.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.45-50
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• 2013

Recently, a method for detecting animal tinnitus objectively, gap prepulse inhibition of acoustic startling (GPIAS) were reported. However, the GPIAS method is difficult to be directly applied to human tinnitus research because measuring repeatedly startling responses evoked by more than 110 dB SPL acoustic stimuli for human is not easy. In this paper, the auditory late latency response (ALLR) measurement system which can measure conveniently evoked potentials involving the information about the brain cortical activity related with auditory psychologic phenomena such as a tinnitus has been implemented. By using the implemented system, 8 persons with normal hearing sense have been experimented to measure N1-P2 amplitudes of ALLRs evoked by gap prepulse based acoustic stimuli. Through the experimental results, the prepulse inhibitions of all the participants' N1-P2 responses have been observed and their characteristics were evaluated. And it is verified that our implemented system can be utilized as a device for researching and evaluating the objective tinnitus detection method in the future study.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.229-236
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• 2013

Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of wearing spandex underwear on the muscle activity and heart rate during flexion and extension of trunk and knee joint. Background: Back pain continues to be the leading overall cause of physical illness and lowering productivity in workplace. Recently, the utility of assistive garment or back belt have been discussed to lessen the back pain as well as to preserve the right posture. Method: Ten males and ten females participated in the experiment. Gender, wearing spandex underwear and postures were used for independent variables, and muscle activity, the level of asymmetry of muscle activity and variation of heart rate were used as dependent variables. Muscle activity and heart rate were measured during flexion and extension of trunk and knee joint. Results: When wearing spandex underwear, the muscle activity was relatively low compared to the condition not wearing the spandex underwear. The symmetry of muscle activity and the variation of heart rate were statistically significant at the 0.05 significance level. In particular, it was found that the symmetry of muscle activity increased while wearing spandex underwear. Conclusion: Spandex underwear has an effect that can reduce asymmetry of right and left muscles which are relevant to leg because spandex underwear equally supports right and left low-back muscles. Application: The spandex underwear used in this study can apply to the rehabilitation as an useful assistive device.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.9
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• pp.2006-2013
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• 2015

Deaf are it is difficult to communicate to represent the voice heard, so theay use mostly using the speech, sign language, writing, etc. to communicate. It is the best way to use sign language, in order to communicate deaf and normal people each other. But they must understand to use sign language. In this paper, we designed and implementated finger language translation system to support communicate between deaf and normal people. We used leap motion as input device that can track finger and hand gesture. We used raspberry pi that is low power sing board computer to process input data and translate finger language. We implemented application used Node.js and MongoDB. The client application complied with HTML5 so that can be support any smart device with web browser.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.119-126
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• 2017

In the clinical setting, the pressure bio-feedback device is used for the spinal rehabilitation of patients with back pain, but it has several disadvantages. The purpose of this study was to develop a digitalized pressure biofeedback system that provides precise exercise method and posture in real time during the spinal rehabilitation exercise by sensing and monitoring body movements and balance of users and providing biofeedback to users. After that, the usability testing for a digitalized pressure biofeedback system will be conducted to identify problems such as safety, performance, operability, and satisfaction, and suggest improvement directions. A total of 33 subjects were participated in the usability testing. The experts group and the users group evaluated the developed digitalized pressure biofeedback system on a scale of 5 points after using the equipment. In the user group, safety was 3.59, operability was 4.38, satisfaction was 4.49. In the expert group, safety was 2.86, operability was 3.91, and performance was 4.28. Based on the usability evaluation, if the problems of stability of the cradle for tablet PC, air injection, screen display, etc. are solved, it becomes a exercise device capable of accurately exercising and evaluating the function of the spine by checking its own motion state while the spinal stabilization exercise.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.16-32
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• 2024

Background: Exercise equipments and assistive devices for the disabled are being developed, but improvements for usability are still needed. The purpose of this study was to improve and utilize the developed exercise equipment and assistance devices by conducting usability test for people with spinal cord injury. Design: Cross-sectional Study. Methods: Scenarios and usability indicators were derived by conducting a preliminary usability test, 5 non-disabled men and women aged 19 or older. In the scenario, a total of 9 tasks were sequentially performed, including 2 tasks of entry and exit, 5 tasks of assistance devices and weight stack adjustment, and 2 tasks of pre exercise and exercise. The usability indicators were task success (success or fail), execution time (sec), safety, and convenience. For safety, 7 questions (Likert scale, 1~5 point) related to safety, stability and hazard were derived, and for convenience, the system usability scale (SUS score) was used (range: 0~100, 50 percentile rank is 68 point). Results: As a result of the usability test of people with spinal cord injury, there was a large variation among subjects in the task of adjusting the position of the pulley and support in the execution time (11.64~25.44 seconds), and one person failed to adjust the pulley. The safety level showed a lower score (score = 3 points) than other items in the item of entrapment or skin pressure, and in the case of SUS, the average score was 64.5 points, which was close to the acceptable level. Conclusion: Through the usability test, it was confirmed that exercise equipment for the disabled needs improvement in operability, pinching, and pressure, and that it is necessary to develop an assistive device that provides unrestrained posture information (biofeedback) to maintain correct posture during exercise.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.957-962
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• 2005

Today, the elderly is increasing gradually in the Republic of Korea society and this problem will be more serious in the near future. Therefore, engineering support for aged people is required. We are establishing a new field of healthcare engineering for elderly people and aiming to support for aged people and disabled people using adaptive control and instrument technology. In this paper, the goal is to implement the shared control of a robot mobility aid for the elderly. As using this type of assistive technology to be useful by its intended user community, it supports elderly people and handicapped people to live independently in their private homes. The interface transforms the force applied by the user into the robot's motion. Devices like buttons, joysticks, and levers already exist for relaying user input; however, they require hand displacement that would loosen or otherwise release the user's hold. Such interfaces make operation very difficult and potentially unsafe. Therefore, we propose a shared control system. It's safe more than joysticks and buttons. The shared control is a means of registering the user's intention through physical interaction. It's an important component in the development of robotic elderly assistant. The concept of shared control describes a system which is two or more independent control systems. We are using that the three component blocks consist of pressure sensor (flexible force sensor), circuit of measurement and transfer function. Experimental trials of this paper have been tested at the indoor environment. The robot is able to know the user intended direction through haptic device were logged along with the robot's force sensor.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.496-504
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• 2023

This paper recognizes the motion intention of the wearer using a muscle stiffness sensor and proposes a control system for a wearable robot based on this. The proposed system recognizes the onset time of the motion using sensor data, determines the assistance mode, and provides assistive torque to the hip flexion/extension motion of the wearer through the generated reference trajectory according to the determined mode. The onset time of motion was detected using the CUSUM algorithm from the muscle stiffness sensor, and by comparing the detection results of the onset time with the EMG sensor and IMU, it verified its applicability as an input device for recognizing the intention of the wearer before motion. In addition, the stability of the proposed method was confirmed by comparing the results detected according to the walking speed of two subjects (1 male and 1 female). Based on these results, the assistance mode (gait assistance mode and muscle strengthening mode) was determined based on the detection results of onset time, and a reference trajectory was generated through cubic spline interpolation according to the determined assistance mode. And, the practicality of the proposed system was also confirmed by applying it to an actual wearable robot.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.205-211
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• 2014

The purpose of this document is to provide basic data helpful in selecting seating device material by examining the affects of polyurethane foam material on seating pressure. In order to achieve this study objective, four seats, 6cm in height, were produced in hardness of: 13, 28, 25, and $45kg/cm^2$. To measure the sitting pressure distribution (depending on the characteristics of the produced seats), 10 healthy subjects participated in the experiment. XSENSOR was used a measuring device, and each seat was mounted on a wheelchair simulation. By analyzing the obtained data with Average Pressure(AP), Peak Pressure(PP,), and Contact Area(CA), the sitting pressure was measured for five minutes on each seat. This experiment showed the following results: There were significant differences between the AP, PP, and CA in the seat material (p<0.5). While the hardness of $18kg/cm^2$ showed low pressure, the hardness of $45kg/cm^2$ showed high pressure. This study also showed that seat material made of polyurethane should be considered when selecting seats. If polyurethane foam is used in seat recommendations, it will be recommended to use $18kg/cm^2$ for the proper hardness of the seat material.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.195-201
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• 2015

In this study, IT education contents have been developed based on the u-Learning approach for people with hearing impairment, focusing on allowing the user to learn from anywhere and anytime. Specifically, this study applies HTML5 to implementing IT education contents(JSP, Oracle) for the deaf because HTML5 enables the learner to access the contents through both web and mobile device on various platforms including android, Mac OS, and PC etc. The results of this study are as follows: First, the online computer courses are mostly supposed to be compatible with diverse types of mobile devices. However, some of the contents could not be run on applications residing in web and mobile devices because the contents tend to be developed using FLASH. HTML5 is the effective way to overcome the compatibility problem. Second, FLASH and HTML5 contents authoring tools have been compared in terms of their strong and weak points by applying the developed contents to those tools. The study also suggests that the future work would be needed in order to implement wide variety of event functions with HTML5. Lastly, design strategies enabling access through web and mobile devices have been analyzed in accordance with u-Learning design guidelines for the deaf and mobile application accessibility guidelines. However, in the latter case, the future work regarding design guidelines needs to be conducted to improve the educational accessibility depending on the level of impairment.