MICA - Mobile Internet Connected Assistant
Sven Rönnbäck CSEE
LTU Sweden
Jouni Piekkari Industrial Design Univ. of Lapland
Finland
Kalevi Hyyppä CSEE
LTU Sweden
Liisa Hakapää Industrial Design Univ. of Lapland
Finland
Simo Koskinen Social Work Univ. of Lapland
Finland
Veikko Kamunen Industrial Design Univ. of Lapland
Finland
Abstract— It is important that assistive devices adapt to the users personal needs and wishes. Technical and form designers need specialized knowledge about the user, that is why we need to build up knowledge and cooperation with the user. This means that we make tests in real environments such as homes and nursing homes. Users are diverse which means that they need diverse technical applications.
Many users need wheelchairs in several life situations. In the MICA (Mobile Internet Connected Assistant) project we study an autonomous wheelchair that has the capability to navigate in complex environments. The vehicle is connected to the Internet using wireless technology. That makes it possible to tele-operate the wheelchair and support a user over a physical distance. Since the system gives an arbitrary user the ability to remote operate the vehicle it is possible for an assistant or relative to control, help or assist in difficult situations.
The wheelchair has an Internet browser support where anyone can see live video taken from the camera onboard the vehicle. The technical aspect of the research focuses on autonomous navigation and how to develop technique to assist disabled users in their home environment.
Design students from the University of Lapland suggested different devices to use the automatic technology of MICA.
The aim was to correspond to different needs of diverse people. A second challenge for the devices are to fit the users, personalize them so that devices respect the individual and give life support and keeps the identity of the users. This challenge began to clear with knowledge about the single user.
INTRODUCTION
The MICA project is a cooperation between Luleå University of Technology and University of Lapland, Rovaniemi. The project has two PhD students, one placed at each university. The project makes the connection be- tween technology, design and social studies, Figure 1. The project has a modern wheelchair and the technologies to assist a user.
In Rovaniemi the research is about the knowledge on user, how elderly can be a resource for design and how to design personal devices. The research continues previous work of the ELVI research group that concentrated on aged people [1]. Challenges for design was to develop and test new automatic technology and how to use knowledge about the user in design. In the ELVI-project it arised that a user does not use a device if he/she think it is not needed, especially if the device is not easy to use.
There are lot of different semi-autonomous wheelchairs [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. They have different user interfaces,
Fig. 1. MICA has two study perspectives. The researchers at University of Lapland study how a device should be designed to meet a users’
personal needs and wishes. In Luleå the studies concentrates on navigation algorithms, hardware and sensors.
for example one wheelchair is controlled with electrodes connected to the head of the user [8]. Wheelchairs are commonly used among elderly and then the design of both the user interface and the vehicle are of special importance.
Design to meet people is very important, if this is not meet the devices will not be used [9]. Designer usually look on users as a group. But in MICA we think about the design using the knowledge about the single user. Instead of using a group of people it is important to observe with an individual user perspective.
Users’ requirements for easy acceptance includes also criterias like personal comfort, satisfaction, flexibility in use, and learnability [10].
The goal of a user centered approach is to describe, define and then place the desirable usability properties in future products [11].
Characteristics to user centered design is to use an iterative process: analyze and develop each design stage of the design concept with real users.
When you see a home, you see many things about the resident, you must get knowledge about the resident and from this it is possible to design a home [12]. In MICA we took interviews and photos of homes and used the collected knowledge to make a personal design for the user.
There is a growing diversity among aged people, therefor it is important to analyzed the resources of a single user,
and from that make a personal design [13].
If a user has restricted mobility and is maybe in a low health condition the user becomes more dependent on the environment. From the interviews we got the information that the longer a user had stayed in the same environment the more he/she feels as one with it. It is important that the user feels secure and gets support from the environment during the aging process [14].
The technology must also be a part of the support, the MICA technology makes it possible for the user to stay home. To meet these requirements we must get knowledge about the users’ personal needs but also the home, more in section I-A.
The MICA project is looking for practical design so- lutions and how technology can help and assist aged and disabled users and compensate for low health condition.
The paper is organized as follows:
Section I focuses on the resources of users and specially aged ones. It also describes the ELVI project and the design to meet a single user [1].
Sub section I-F focuses on the possibilities of technologies and the current MICA system.
I. USERSTUDY
In the user study of MICA there are some single users, aged and disabled people. It is important that a device adapts to the personal needs and wishes of a user. That is why the designers need specialized knowledge about the user and the adaption must be done in cooperation with the user. To get the information we did tests in real environments such as homes and nursing homes.
A. The face of aging
Aging has two faces. On one hand, aging can represent an unwelcome situation for some people. They face the risk of weak physical and mental capacity and periods of illness. On the other hand, old people are widely experi- enced and possess great wisdom and lot of different skills.
Aging can have both positive and negative outcomes. This text analyze the positive outcomes of aging, the resources of elderly people. All these types of resources are outlined and discussed below.
B. Resources of aged people
The collective resources include the skills of elderly people. The socio-cultural resources include experience of life, philosophy of life, wisdom, cultural creativity, storytelling, life as a story, elderly people as users and producers of cultural activities, elderly people as mediators of traditions, tacit knowledge and the resources of life management.
The social resources include the significance of places and home, the social networks of elderly people, the significance of family and grandparent-hood. The personal resources include positive attitude to life, strong self- identity and self-esteem, strong experience of the meaning
of life, intellectual resources (emotions, knowledge, skills, intelligence, ability to live without past trauma), childhood memories, life as a fulfilment, values of life, conviction, spirituality and religion. The text argues that resources of elderly people and aging must be given due to the consideration of the strategies and programmes of both local and national-level ageing policies.
C. Aged’s resources are resources for design
The resources of elderly people are resources to utilize for design. First designers collect knowledge, which makes the resources clear and make a ground for design. Designer must transform individual knowledge to forms and features of the products.
Before the MICA project; similar research was con- ducted in the ELVI project which was directed to the increasing number of senior citizens´and their abilities to enjoy life at home, whether on countryside or towns in the north [1]. The ELVI-project is a good example of a multidisciplinary approach to the social challenges created by the growing number of elderly people. The topic covers a large number of research and development tasks. Most of them are immaterial of their nature; solving these need changes in our own behavior, our values, the society and the services. However a lot must be done to improve the nearest environment, the home and assistive products; aids of mobility, household environment, and every day living in the north. Question of mobility has been intensively studied in several projects worldwide.
D. Design for user
Accessibility, the principle and the concept "Design for all" in public environments begins with improvements in existing homes villages and urban areas. Individual and aged users demand own designs. Trend is towards to emphasize the differences of users. Users are diverse which means that we need diverse technical applications for them.
The wheelchair is a base for various moving devices.
Users needs applications of wheelchair technologies in several life situations. Design students from the University of Lapland suggested different devices that uses the MICA technology. The aim was to correspond to different needs of diverse people. One of them was BabyNest; a system that assist an handicapped mother, Figure 2.
Another design was the Multiscooter; a wheelchair with a docking capability to an outdoor device. One part is used indoors and the docking part is attached when the user want to travel a longer distance outdoors. They also designed Sensoguide; a walker unit that can localize itself. More information on other designs is available on the net [15]. A second challenge for devices is to fit the users, be personal so that the devices respect the individual and give support in the coping and identity of the user. This challenge began to clear with knowledge on the user.
Fig. 2. MICA BabyNest model; designed by students at University of Lapland. It assists a handicapped mother in her daily care of her child [16]. It has two parts, a chair and a baby-bed. The baby-bed can be remotely controlled from the wheelchair.
E. Knowledge about user
We must look for good ways to find knowledge about the user, in a wider context, so that it is possible for personal things to emerge. An individual is composed of things related to himself, so it is important to collect knowledge of the environment and the user as a person. We had to make interviews, take photos and co-operate with the users to do that.
Photos of favorite places and favorite objects tells the story about a single user, like photos of the user mirrors himself. The first step was to find and identify concrete users. We involved design students to look at the designed devices from the previous year and to redesign them to fit individual persons.
The design students met the users and asked questions to collect knowledge for the redesign. Aged users have life experiences and memories and the devices supporting effects are for example that they should keep memories active, so memories becomes part of the daily living.
They analyzed the answers to design a device that met the individual needs and wishes.
F. International interest on wheelchairs
A wheelchair is an example of many mobility aids which will be increasingly needed. Members of the Industrial De- sign department have been working on several alternative concepts directed to improve mobility of senior citizens.
Part of the products are intended to mainly be used in home
environments, some are aimed to help mobility outside, in summertime and as also in the winter.
Design of new and improved aids for mobility has a strong international context too. Industrial Design depart- ment students at University of Lapland, with lector Liisa Hakapää as leader, have participated in the development of usability of the robot wheelchair at Luleå University of Technology. Another similar type of project was made with the Technical University of Helsinki. Another one was together with a Japanese research group to develop a more comfortable and homelike chair using a wood construction and manual operation possibilities (2004).
TECHNOLOGY
The MICA project has a modern wheelchair connected to the Internet. Lot of different technologies are mounted on it, Figure 3. The wheelchair is suitable for people with
Fig. 3. The MICA wheelchair. It is equipped with advanced technologies that makes it autonomous. It has the same technology as the BabyNest design, Figure 2
special needs and restricted mobility, for example a user that for instance has been stagnated by a traffic accident.
The technology gives users the mobility back into their lives. The wheelchair can for example be commanded to take a user from one place to another, that can be to move the user from the living room to the kitchen. If the wheelchair is without a user it is good if it can respond to voice, a gesture, sign language or remote communication
[17]. A special gesture can call for the wheelchair. There exists systems to analyze voices which gives the possibility to give commands like, "stop", "door go", "left wall go"
or "kitchen go". The wheelchair could even be used by a user that is paralyzed with the help of a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) [18].
Map building
The research shows that it is possible to navigate the wheelchair with high precision by observing one natural landmark, like a wall segment [19]. With this result a natural step is to develop a system that can navigate relative to more than one landmark. It is then important that the system automatically can build a structure of landmarks in new places and environments. As the wheelchair enters a place it automatically starts to detect, identify and track landmarks.
These are later used for the navigation of the wheelchair [20]. If no landmark is visible the wheelchair relies on the dead-reckoning system, this means that the vehicle knows how far it has traveled by measuring the motions of its wheels and can predict what landmarks it will see next.
A scenario is to use the technique to assist a user in a store. When the wheelchair is human controlled it prevents the user from hitting people and objects in its surrounding environment. As the user wants to exit the store he presses a button, the vehicle remember the path taken and drives out from the store and back home.
For wheelchair navigation at home, inside an apartment or house, the vehicle can use reflective landmarks to make the navigation more robust, precise and reliable [21] [22].
Event-Casting
A display presents valid and important information to a user. For example, the scanning technology can detect doors, floors and walls and present that information to the user. Detected objects can be presented in bright light colors on a black background which can be useful to a user with poor eye vision.
It is also possible to mark interesting objects in the surrounding like the phone, the TV, the door and so on.
Event-casting is a concept where the user marks his intention by pointing at an object to be used. Events can start navigation, communication, chat, a phone call or Internet surfing [23] [24]. The users and event casting objects could be visible in the artificial world on the display. Other users could also be visible and can mark their activity.
When using event casting it is nessesary to know the location of the wheelchair and all possible event casting target objects. The wheelchair has a map of its surrounding and know the position of each interesting event casting object, like the door, the phone, the TV and so on. So when the user make an event cast the wheelchair knows which object to associate that cast to.
RESULTS
This paper presents different ideas and how technology can be used by both users and assistive personal. It is possible to design devices with knowledge about a single user so that new devices give life and identity support to aged and disabled users. For design, designers must collect versatile knowledge about user because every user is diverse.
One result of this research is that in the future, automatic technology will be useful outside, in nature, on the streets, in the yards and indoors. It will also support the user and compensate for low physical condition.
DISCUSSION
It is important to develop design practice to collect knowledge about user so that the designer knows the user.
Knowledge is then used in the design process to design a product that will meet the needs for both the technology and the user.
Technology is to serve people and make life more easy.
The MICA wheelchair is a good platform but the advanced technology must be tuned and made more user friendly. A device should be presented to a user so that he/she feel and get to know the technology and what advances it give.
The user must feel that he/she is in charge and not transported by a machine. The user should always be in control, however if a medical trauma is detected it can be nessesary to take the user back home and wait for emergency personal to appear. If the wheelchair have a speaker it can call nearby people for assistance and inform that the user suffers illness and needs medical treatment imidiately [25].
In the design praxis we must look at the whole human and his/her needs and a design to both the software and hardware that meet the expectations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to Patrik Emilsson, currently working for Permobil, for providing the wheelchair and support like new batteries for the vehicle. Thanks to the Design Students at the Department of Industrial Design at University of Lapland who did user studies on the MICA technology. Thanks also to the EU program Interreg IIIA Nord for funding the MICA project.
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