This study proposes an obstacle detection method based on depth information to aid the visually impaired people in avoiding obstacles as they move in an unfamiliar environment. Firstly, we have applied dilation of morphology and erosion of morphology to remove the crushing noise of the depth image and have used the Least Squares Method (LSM) in a quadratic polynomial to approximate floor curves...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Improved walking is a common goal after stroke. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the torque generated by the muscles of both lower extremities and 2 locomotor tasks: gait on level surfaces and stair climbing in people who had strokes. SUBJECTS Twenty community-dwelling individuals (mean age=61.2 years, SD=8.4, range=52-82) who had stroke...

[Purpose] This study aimed to determine which clinical measures of walking performance and lower limb muscle strength would predict energy cost during stair ascent and descent in community-dwelling individuals with stroke. [Subjects and Methods] Regression analysis of cross-sectional data from 55 individuals between one and five years post-stroke was used to investigate the measures of walking ...

BACKGROUND Physical activity levels seem to play a role in patellofemoral pain (PFP); however, few studies have been conducted to confirm this hypothesis. OBJECTIVES To determine the reported pain levels of women with and without PFP who maintain different levels of physical activity; to determine the capability of these levels to predict pain; and to test the capability of two stair-negotiat...

BACKGROUND Alterations in knee kinematics after partial meniscectomy have been linked to the increased risk of osteoarthritis in this population. Understanding differences in kinematics during static versus dynamic activities of increased demand can provide important information regarding the possible underlying mechanisms of these alterations. HYPOTHESIS Differences in the following 2 kinema...

// perform f i l t e r i n g vector s e l e c t edFea tu r e s ; s e l e c t o r−> f i l t e r ( posFeatureVectors , negFeatureVectors , s e l e c t edFea tu r e s ) ; // trim the f e a t u r e v e c t o r s o f p o s i t i v e examples for (unsigned i = 0 ; i < posFeatureVectors . s i z e ( ) ; i++) { for ( int j = posFeatureVectors [ i ] . s i z e ( ) − 1 ; j >= 0 ; j−−) { i f ( ! s e l...

In this paper a special type of nonlinear marking specifications called stair generalized mutual exclusion constraints (stair-GMECs) is defined. A stair-GMEC can be represented by an inequality whose left-hand is a linear combination of floor functions. Stair-GMECs have a higher modeling power than classical GMECs and can model legal marking sets that cannot be defined by OR-AND GMECs. We propo...

Following total knee arthroplasty (TKA), physical therapists must evaluate patient readiness to safely begin stair-climbing. Physical therapists might find self-reported chair-rise ability useful in determining stair-climbing readiness of patients. We grouped 31 subjects who were at approximately 3.6 weeks post-TKA by chair-rise ability (group 1 = "Because of my knee, I can only rise from a cha...

Spatially organized clusters are basic structure for large-scale wireless sensor networks. A cluster is generally composed by a large amount of energy-limited low-tier nodes (LNs), which are managed by a powerful cluster head (CH). The low-tier nodes that are close to the cluster head generally become bottlenecks in data collection applications. Energy efficient scheduling is important for the ...