BILATERAL INSTRUMENTED WHEEL SYSTEM FOR MEASURING HANDRIM FORCES DURING MANUAL WHEELCHAIR PROPULSION

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to design and validate a new bilateral instrumented wheel system (IWS) to measure triaxial handrim forces and torques simultaneously during the wheelchair propulsion. The designed and implemented system measures the force applied to the handrims on both sides of a manual wheelchair using 6-axis force/torque sensors. In addition, a user interface receives the measurements from the left and right IWSs. To verify the accuracy of the wheel system, we evaluate force and torque measurements during the static and dynamic tests. The maximum error in static measurements of force and torque are 4.29% and 1.95%, respectively. Likewise, dynamic tests using planar forces and axle torques provide low errors and measurements that are highly correlated with the expected values ([Formula: see text]). The results revealed that the proposed IWS can be used to measure bilateral 3D handrim reaction forces with acceptable accuracy.