The prostheses used by the majority of persons with upper limb amputations today offer a limited range of motion. Relative to anatomical joints transradial (below the elbow) prosthesis users lose at least two of the three degrees of freedom provided by the wrist and forearm. Some myoeletric prostheses currently allow for forearm pronation and supination (rotation about an axis parallel to the forearm) and the operation of a powered prosthetic hand. Body-powered prostheses, incorporating hooks and other cable driven terminal devices, have even fewer active degrees of freedom. In order to perform activities of daily living, an amputee must use a greater than normal range of movement from other anatomical body joints to compensate for the loss of movement caused by the amputation. By studying this compensatory motion of prosthetic users, the mechanics of how they adapt to the loss of range of motion in a given limb and specific tasks were analyzed. The purpose of this study is to create a robotic based kinematic model that can predict the compensatory motion of a given task using given subject data in select tasks. The tasks used in this study are the activities of daily living: opening a door, drinking from a cup, lifting a box, and turning a steering wheel. For the model the joint angles necessary to accomplish a task are calculated by a simulation for a set of prostheses and tasks. The simulation contains a set of configurations that are represented by parameters that consist of the joint degrees of freedom provided by each prosthesis, and a set of task information that includes joint constraints and trajectories. In the simulation the hand or prosthesis follows the trajectory to perform the task. Analysis of tasks is done by attaching prosthetic constraints to one of the arms of the upper body model in the simulation, other arm maintains an anatomical configuration. By running the model through this simulation with different configurations the compensatory motions were found. Results can then be used to select the best prosthesis for a given user, design prostheses that are more effective at selected tasks, and demonstrate some possible compensations given a set of residual joint limitations with certain prosthetic components, by optimizing the configuration of the prostheses to improve their performance.

Physical and cognitive disabilities make it difficult or impossible to perform simple personal or job-related tasks. The primary objective of this research and development effort is to assist persons with physical disabilities to perform activities of daily living (ADL) using a smart 9-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) modular wheelchair-mounted robotic arm system (WMRA). The combination of the wheelchair's 2-DoF mobility control and the robotic arm's 7-DoF manipulation control in a single control mechanism allows people with disabilities to do many activities of daily living (ADL) tasks that are otherwise hard or impossible to accomplish. Different optimization methods for redundancy resolution are explored and modified to fit the new system with combined mobility and manipulation control and to accomplish singularity and obstacle avoidance as well as other optimization criteria to be implemented on the new system. The resulting control algorithm of the system is tested in simulation using C++ and Matlab codes to resolve any issues that might occur during the testing on the physical system. Implementation of the combined control is done on the newly designed robotic arm mounted on a modified power wheelchair and with a custom designed gripper. The user interface is designed to be modular to accommodate any user preference, including a haptic device with force sensing capability, a spaceball, a joystick, a keypad, a touch screen, head/foot switches, sip and puff devices, and the BCI 2000 that reads the electromagnetic pulses coming out of certain areas of the brain and converting them to control signals after conditioning. Different sensors (such as a camera, proximity sensors, a laser range finder, a force/torque sensor) can be mounted on the WMRA system for feedback and intelligent control. The user should be able to control the WMRA system autonomously or using teleoperation. Wireless Bluetooth technology is used for remote teleoperation in case the user is not on the wheelchair. Pre-set activities of daily living tasks are programmed for easy and semi-autonomous execution.

<p>Kroniskt obstruktiv lungsjukdom (KOL) är ett kroniskt tillstånd med ökad slembildning och svullnad i slemhinnorna vilket innebär att luft får svårt att passera genom luftrören. KOL beskrivs som en långsamt progredierande lungsjukdom. Symtom som är karaktäristiska vid KOL är hosta, sputum-produktion och dyspné vid ansträngning. Rökning är en mycket viktig bakomliggande orsak till KOL. Allt eftersom sjukdomen utvecklas får personerna svårare och svårare att genomföra aktiviteter som kräver liten fysisk kapacitet som till exempel att klä på sig, äta mat och sköta sin morgon- och kvällstoalett. Arbetsterapeuter lär ut energibesparande arbetssätt, pysandning/sluten läppandning, kontrollerad andningsteknik samt avslappningsmetoder som syftar till att kunna hantera ångest och stress. Sex personer deltog i denna studie vars syfte var att ta reda på om ett energibesparande arbetssätt som metod kan underlätta för personer med KOL vid utförande av köksaktiviteter. Metod: personerna kom vid två tillfällen till ett aktivitetskök där de fick laga fruktsallad och koka kaffe. Vid det första tillfället fick personerna göra som de var vana att göra hemma och vid det andra tillfället fick de använda ett energibesparande arbetssätt. Forcerad utandning (PEF-värde) och andnings-frekvens mättes liksom syremättnad (saturation) i blodet. Personerna fick även skatta sin andfåddhet och ansträngning enligt Borgskalan. Efter andra aktivitetstillfället fick de svara på två frågor som syftade till att ta reda på om de tidigare hade använt energibesparande arbetssätt och om de upplevde någon skillnad mellan de två aktivitetstillfällena. Resultat: studien visade att personerna upplevde förbättring i form av minskad andnöd och ansträngning. Vidare kunde högre PEF-värden och förbättrad saturation noteras hos flera av deltagarna. Slutsats: studien visade på att ett energibesparande arbetssätt som metod underlättade för personerna som deltog i studien vid utförandet av köksaktiviteter.</p>

Kroniskt obstruktiv lungsjukdom (KOL) är ett kroniskt tillstånd med ökad slembildning och svullnad i slemhinnorna vilket innebär att luft får svårt att passera genom luftrören. KOL beskrivs som en långsamt progredierande lungsjukdom. Symtom som är karaktäristiska vid KOL är hosta, sputum-produktion och dyspné vid ansträngning. Rökning är en mycket viktig bakomliggande orsak till KOL. Allt eftersom sjukdomen utvecklas får personerna svårare och svårare att genomföra aktiviteter som kräver liten fysisk kapacitet som till exempel att klä på sig, äta mat och sköta sin morgon- och kvällstoalett. Arbetsterapeuter lär ut energibesparande arbetssätt, pysandning/sluten läppandning, kontrollerad andningsteknik samt avslappningsmetoder som syftar till att kunna hantera ångest och stress. Sex personer deltog i denna studie vars syfte var att ta reda på om ett energibesparande arbetssätt som metod kan underlätta för personer med KOL vid utförande av köksaktiviteter. Metod: personerna kom vid två tillfällen till ett aktivitetskök där de fick laga fruktsallad och koka kaffe. Vid det första tillfället fick personerna göra som de var vana att göra hemma och vid det andra tillfället fick de använda ett energibesparande arbetssätt. Forcerad utandning (PEF-värde) och andnings-frekvens mättes liksom syremättnad (saturation) i blodet. Personerna fick även skatta sin andfåddhet och ansträngning enligt Borgskalan. Efter andra aktivitetstillfället fick de svara på två frågor som syftade till att ta reda på om de tidigare hade använt energibesparande arbetssätt och om de upplevde någon skillnad mellan de två aktivitetstillfällena. Resultat: studien visade att personerna upplevde förbättring i form av minskad andnöd och ansträngning. Vidare kunde högre PEF-värden och förbättrad saturation noteras hos flera av deltagarna. Slutsats: studien visade på att ett energibesparande arbetssätt som metod underlättade för personerna som deltog i studien vid utförandet av köksaktiviteter.

The general aim of the present thesis is to expand knowledge about the everyday lives of the oldest old (85+) living independently and to improve and deepen the understanding of their doings and possession and use of technology. The everyday lives of the oldest old represent, in many aspects an under-researched area, partly because this age group is seldom included in national surveys regarding living conditions and time use. This thesis comprises four papers. In paper I the extent and direction of research regarding elderly people is investigated through an examination of articles published in six well-reputed and well-established occupational therapy journals. Fifteen percent of the articles published between 2001 and 2006 included elderly people to some extent. Only five articles were about the oldest old. Most articles had a quantitative approach and concerned instrument development and testing. The findings show that articles concerning the oldest old are sparse, especially regarding their subjective experience. The following three papers are based on data derived from an empirical project based on interviews and observations with 18 oldest old individuals. Paper II explores how individuals over 85 years of age themselves describe and experience daily life. „Doing everyday life‟ is described through five overarching themes: „Experiencing being old‟, „Doings in everyday life‟, „Patterns of the day‟, „Altered doings‟ and „The importance of time‟. The daily doings are described as consisting of the usual things that have always been done, although how the doings are performed have changed. To do something is stressed as important for well-being, and a strong motivation to manage everyday doings on one‟s own is expressed. Paper III explores and describes the experiences and relations to technology in everyday doings of the oldest old as they themselves describe it. Four categories; „Perception of technology‟, „Technology holdings‟, „Handling technology‟ and „Compensatory technology in old age‟ emerged from the material. Technology needs to be integrated into the daily routines for it to be used. A modest and pragmatic attitude towards technology stands out, showing a discrepancy with public policy, which implies that technology will enhance independence and participation for elderly people. In paper IV, data from a younger group (-85) is included to describe, compare and discuss how elderly people belonging to different age cohorts (-85 and 85+) relate to their physical environment, primarily technological objects used in the home, and to examine how this is influenced by experiences and possession of technology over the life course. Possession and use of technological objects are similar for both groups over the life course from the parental home through the family time, although in the senior citizen time differences in technology possession and use appear. At higher ages the chronological age becomes a factor in deciding about upgrading or downsizing of the technology room; this is described as an „aging turn‟. The conclusions drawn are that to continue and perform the everyday doings as one has always done is important in old age. At high ages downsizing of the technology rooms is an important issue and new technological objects need to be incorporated in everyday doings in order to be used and perceived as beneficial.

ASIPs are needed to handle the future demand of flexible yet highperformance embedded computing. The flexibility of ASIPs makes them preferable over fixed function ASICs. Also, a well designed ASIP, has a power consumption comparable to ASICs.  However the cost associated with ASIP design is a limiting factor for a more wide spread adoption. A number of different tools have been proposed, promising to ease this design process. However all of the current state of the art tools limits the designer due to a template based design process. It blocks design freedoms and limits the I/O bandwidth of the template. We have therefore proposed the Novel Generator of Accelerator and Processors (NoGAP). NoGAP is a design automation tool for ASIP andaccelerator design that puts very few limits on what can be designed, yet NoGAP gives support by automating much of the tedious anderror prone tasks associated with ASIP design. This thesis will present NoGAP and much of its key concepts. Such as; the NoGAP-CL) which is a language used to implement processors in NoGAP, This thesis exposes NoGAP's key technologies, which include automatic bus and wire sizing, instruction decoder and pipeline management, how PC-FSMs can be generated, how an assembler can be generated, and how cycle accurate simulators can be generated. We have so far proven NoGAP's strengths in three extensive case studies, in one a floating point pipelined data path was designed, in another a simple RISC processor was designed, and finally one advanced RISC style DSP was designed using NoGAP. All these case studies points to the same conclusion, that NoGAP speeds up development time, clarify complex pipeline architectures, retains design flexibility, and most importantly does not incur much performance penalty, compared to hand optimized RTL code. We belive that the work presented in this thesis shows that NoGAP, using our proposed novel approach to micro architecture design, can have a significant impact on both academic and industrial hardware design. To our best knowledge NoGAP is the first system that has demonstrated that a template free processor construction framework can be developed and generate high performance hardware solutions. / NoGAP

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No description available.

A wheelchair-mounted robotic arm (WMRA) was designed and built to meet the needs of mobility-impaired persons, and to exceed the capabilities of current devices of this type. The mechanical design incorporates DC servo drive, with all actuator hardware at each individual joint, allowing reconfigurable link lengths. It has seven principal degrees of freedom and uses a side mount on a power wheelchair. A simple, scalable control system allows coordinated Cartesian control, and offers expandability for future research, such as coordinated motion with the wheelchair itself. Design payload including gripper is 6 kg, and the total arm mass with controller is 14 kg. These and other design attributes were confirmed through testing on the completed prototype.

The wheelchair-mounted robotic arm (WMRA) is a 9-degree of freedom (DoF) assistive system that consists of a 2-DoF modified commercial power wheelchair and a custom 7-DoF robotic arm. Kinematics and control methodology for the 9-DoF system that combine mobility and manipulation have been previously developed and implemented. This combined control allows the wheelchair and robotic arm to follow a single trajectory based on weighted optimizations. However, for the execution of activities of daily living (ADL) in the real-world environment, modified control techniques have been implemented. In order to execute macro ADL tasks, such as a "go to and pick up" task, this work has implemented several control algorithms on the WMRA system. Visual servoing based on template matching and feature extraction allows the mobile platform to approach the desired goal object. Feature extraction based on scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) gives the system object detection capabilities to recommend actions to the user and to orient the arm to grasp the goal object using visual servoing. Finally, a collision avoidance system is implemented to detect and avoid obstacles when the wheelchair platform is moving towards the goal object. These implementations allow the WMRA system to operate autonomously from the beginning of the task where the user selects the goal object, all the way to the end of the task where the task has been fully completed.