Consideration of operability of wheelchair by difference in hand rim surface processing

Abstract

Wheelchair is known to have a risk of hindering other daily operations if the operation burden is large. Furthermore, it is also known that the secondary risk such as neck pain and tenosynovitis increases. Therefore, development of a wheelchair that can reduce the burden on passengers is required. Many proposals and reports on the quantification of physical and mental loads on wheelchair passengers and methods for alleviating them are made, there is, however, not much enough with respect to hand rims that controls the most of the operation of wheelchairs. In this study, we focused on grasping the hand rim, objectively evaluated the physical load by heart rate, which is a physiological index, and subjective sensibility evaluation by SD method. In this study, we used hand rims for wheelchairs with different surface processing methods, we examined the operability of the wheelchair by driving experiments. Experimental results showed that sandblasting treatment and “pla-soft” painting treatment were more effective for use of routine wheelchairs such as hospital facilities and home than those coated with polyvinyl chloride resin to reduce the load on passengers was suggested.