Shared control wheelchairs can help users to navigate through crowds by enabling the person to drive the wheelchair while receiving support in avoiding pedestrians. To date, research into shared control has largely overlooked the perspectives of wheelchair users. In this paper, we present two studies that aim to address this gap. The first study involved a series of semi-structured interviews with wheelchair users which highlighted the presence of two different interaction loops, one between the user and the wheelchair and a second one between the user and the crowd. In the second study we engaged with wheelchair users and designers to co-design appropriate feedback loops for future shared control interaction interfaces. Based on the results of the co-design session, we present design implications for shared control wheelchair around the need for empathy, embodiment and social awareness; situational awareness and adaptability; and selective information management.

Measuring manual wheelchair activity by using wearable sensors is becoming increasingly common for rehabilitation and monitoring purposes. Until recently most research has focused on the identification of activities of daily living or on counting the number of strokes. However, how a person pushes their wheelchair - their stroke pattern - is an important descriptor of the wheelchair user's quality of movement. This paper evaluates the capability of inertial sensors located at different upper limb locations plus the wheel of the wheelchair, to classify two types of stroke pattern for manual wheelchairs: semicircle and arc. Data was collected using bespoke inertial sensors with a wheelchair fixed to a treadmill. Classification was completed with a linear SVM algorithm, and classification performance was computed for each sensor location in the upper limb, and then in combination with wheel sensor. For single sensors, forearm location had the highest accuracy (96%) followed by hand (93%) and arm (90%). For combined sensor location with wheel, best accuracy came in combination with forearm. These results set the direction towards a wearable wheelchair monitor that can measure the quality as well as the quantity of movement and which offers multiple on-body locations for increased usability.

Children with motor or cognitive impairments who require powered mobility at a very young age will face social and environmental barriers that make learning how to use the mobility device a challenging task. We present a first approach of a framework to help therapists and service providers to assess and monitor how children use their mobility device, which results from the combination of a plug and play inertial sensor, and the support of the Assessment Learning tool (ALP) from Nilsson and Durkin. We performed a formative study on four able-bodied children using an electric wheelchair. Results suggest it is possible to measure children's driving skills with this approach, and that results can be mapped to the validated ALP tool. We present the limitations of our study and the direction of future work.