Abstract
Since Japan has become a nation of aged people recently, the problems of nursing such aged persons as well as handicapped persons have been raised as a serious social issue. One of them is how the person on a wheelchair can move freely using vehicles here and there. In such situation, the passenger cars which are specialized to wheelchair users, are developed recently by many car manufacturers, while these are not always good of the satisfaction, considering safety, operability, and comfortableness. This paper has picked up the vehicle with a slope at rear of a passenger car for a wheelchair to go into the cab, and the physical burdens of the nursing person for a wheelchair user were analyzed : (1) evaluation of human sensitivity by applying "KANSEI engineering", (2) the biomechanical analysis using a virtual human model, (3) physiological experiments using an electromyogram. Then the problems for wheelchair operations were discussed and the adequate human postures have been investigated.
