Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the body load of the wheelchair users during driving wheelchair by oxygen uptake (VO2) values collected with a portable metabolic analysis system (VO2000). We verified the oxygen uptake values compared with VO2000 against a traditional Douglas bag method while wheelchair driving before experiment We measured the oxygen uptake values ranging from rest up to wheelchair running for 10 minutes with about 3.6km/h speed. Simultaneously, we measured the wheelchair driving torque. The air pressure 200kPa and 300kPa in the tires of wheelchair were selected as the parameter of our experiment to evaluate the body load. It was concluded that the evaluation method with the power calculated from an estimate of the oxygen uptake values and the driving torque were useful to verify the body load of wheelchair users.
