Joystick use for virtual power wheelchair driving in individuals with tremor: pilot study.

People with disabilities such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease have difficulty operating conventional movement-sensing joysticks (MSJs) because of varying levels of tremor. We developed an isometric joystick (IJ) that has performed as well as a conventional MSJ when used by persons with upper-limb impairments in real and virtual wheelchair driving tasks. The Weighted-Frequency Fourier Linear Combiner (WFLC) filter has been used to cancel tremor effectively in microsurgery. In this study, we compared an MSJ, IJ, and IJ with the WFLC filter in individuals performing a virtual driving task. Although the WFLC filter did not improve driving performance in this study, the IJ without a filter yielded better results than the conventional MSJ and thus may be a potential alternative to the MSJ in minimizing the effects of tremor.

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