Harshal P. Mahajan, PhD1, Dan Ding, PhD2, Jing Wang, MS3, Shelly X. Ni, BS4, Joshua Telson, BSE5.
Human Engineering Research Laboratories, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, PA(1,2,3,5)
School of Visual Arts, New York, NY (4).Abstract
Due to problems with attention, cognition, memory, and executive functions people with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) face difficulties in independently completing certain instrumental activities of daily living such as meal preparation. The purpose of this research study was to understand specific problems people with TBI face in their activities around their kitchen, specifically focusing on meal preparation tasks. Ethnographic interviews were conducted with people with TBI and specific unmet needs were identified. This paper reports the current status of development of “Cueing Kitchen”, a cognitive orthosis with advanced sensing and prompting tools designed to satisfy some of these unmet needs. The design rationale for deployment of different system components and proposed future developments are also discussed.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded through the National Science Foundation, Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center (grant #EEC 0540865) and US Department of Education Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training: Career Advancement of Engineers in Sciences of Rehabilitation (grant# H133P090010-02). No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.