In general, electric powered wheelchair is used for handicapped persons as a means of movement. Electric powered wheelchair is controlled via joystick, which means that seriously handicapped person as vertebra damaged person can not use the general electric powered wheelchair. In this paper, a new navigation method for an intelligent electric powered wheelchair is proposed, which is very simple to implement by using the robotic technology. Two cameras are used in the system. The one is used for detecting obstacles in front of the wheelchair, and the other is used for detecting the intention of the user by measuring the movement of the head. A series of experiments are performed to evaluate the proposed method and the experimental results show that the proposed method can be applicable to the navigation of an intelligent electric powered wheelchair for seriously handicapped person of vertebra damage.

The purpose of this study was to examine the importance of social role performance in the life satisfaction among spinal cord injuried persons. The study consisted of 81 participants. discharged from the hospital and resided at a private residence, who responded to a mailed questionnaire. The questionnaire contained questions on demographic characteristics: gender. age. marital status, level of education. religious affiliation, empolyment. income, severity of injury, age at onset of injury, time since injury, and duration of hospitalization, life satisfaction index-Z(LSI-Z) and a state of six social roles: working conditions, family relationships, friends relationships, social activities. leisure activities, and religious paticipation. The question on each social role was rated on five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 "very poor" to 5 "very good". The subjects were divided into 1-3/4-5(poor/good performance group) and the subjects who had not performed the social role were classified as poor performance group. The study found over seventy-five percent of participants belonged to the group with poor performance in all six roles. Also, only social activities of social roles was restricted by a severe disability but it was not restricted the others. Income was found to be associated with three social roles: friends relationships, social activities, and leisure activities. In addition, empolyment, income, and duration of hospitaization were found to be associated with life satifaction, however, the severity of injury was not. Subjects in the group with good performance in four social roles: working condition, family relationships. friends relationships, and social activities had significantly higher life satisfaction. Result from a multiple regression analysis indicated that income. role in working condition and family relationships were the significant predictors of life satisfaction. The finding was that the life satisfaction of persons with spinal cord injury appeared to be influenced by income and some aspects of social role performance but not by their disability. The results suggest that we need to encourage to provide financially independent environment and to perform social role designed to yield improvements in life satisfaction for persons with spinal cord injury.