Study on the seat pressure and the muscle activity at the upper body in driving of wheelchair for sport events

Abstract

In this study, I evaluated drive performance of the wheelchair for competitions for the wheelchair for the sporting event that had the camber angle to the wheel, it can drive straight on ahead by the one-hand drive that had joint mechanism to transmit driving force from one side wheel to other side wheel. The subjects were 5 adult health men, all of them right-handed. Measurement was made for 20 m straight for a short time. For evaluation of performance to drive, I measured upper limb myoelectric and the seat pressure. The seat pressure was measured with a body pressure distribution device. In the analysis I used the center point of the seat pressure which is center of gravity. As a measurement result, hard driving was high iEMG compared with normal driving. Both-handed driving was high iEMG in all the muscles compared with one-hand driving in hard driving. But This result is different from the result of high iEMG in all the muscles in one-handed running of the previous study. This is because measurement conditions are different. Also, it was confirmed that center point of the seat pressure moves greatly in one-hand driving compared with both-hands driving.