INTERFACE10 - Emergent Interfaces for Improving Accessibility of Persons with Cerebral Palsy

Project name: INTERFACE10 - Emergent Interfaces for Improving Accessibility of Persons with Cerebral Palsy
Description: The main goal of this project is to research on new technologies that can contribute to increase mobility and accessibility of people suffering from cerebral palsy disorders. Cerebral palsy is a broad term used to describe a group of chronic movement or posture disorders, and the symptoms vary significantly among patients, making the design of interfaces for such specific persons a very challenging task. Among the accessibility problems, increasing the mobility of persons with motor disabilities has motivated researchers on the development of assisted navigation technologies to give, otherwise motor impaired people, a higher freedom of movement, contributing, in this sense, to improve their life standards. Bearing this goal in mind, several research works related to the development of intelligent wheelchairs has been performed in past recent years. In this sense, the user characterization is a relevant research topic when dealing with shared-control systems, such as an intelligent wheelchair, once it may allow an adaptation of the shared control system to the users capabilities.
PI: Urbano J. Nunes
Reference: RIPD/ADA/109661/2009
Website: www2.isr.uc.pt/~urbano/interface10
Fundind entity: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), cofunded by COMPETE
Duration of the action: 2010-04-01 - 2012-06-30