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🦽 Research

Wheelchair & Spinal Cord Injury Biomechanics

SCIWheelchair propulsionErgometer designFitness standardsInverse dynamics

Overview

Wheelchair users are usually grouped by injury level, but that tells you little about how someone actually propels their chair day to day. My work develops a bottom-up way of classifying wheelchair users based on their propulsion kinematics, and builds the accessible tools — like an open-platform ergometer — needed to bring exercise assessment to this population outside specialized labs.

Figures

Wheelchair propulsion motion capture setup
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Wheelchair propulsion motion capture setup
Open-platform ergometer prototype
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Open-platform ergometer prototype
Bottom-up propulsion kinematics classification results
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Bottom-up propulsion kinematics classification results
Participant testing session
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Participant testing session

Methodology

  • Upper-limb kinematics and EMG capture during wheelchair propulsion, analyzed with inverse dynamics.
  • Bottom-up (data-driven) classification of propulsion strategies, clustering users by how they move rather than by injury level alone.
  • Design and validation of a detachable, open-platform wheelchair roller ergometer with inline shaft torque sensing (custom DAQ: LabJack U3-HV, torque sensor, LabVIEW/MATLAB control), built for accessible exercise assessment.
  • Respiratory and biomechanical correlational analysis to set exercise-intensity and fitness standards specific to active individuals with SCI.

Selected Outputs