All QoLT Center projects are multidisciplinary and interrelated [see research organization chart]

We are in the process of updating our project lists, so please visit this page again soon.

Acceptance and Adoption
One of the fundamental goals of ERC is to promote the widespread use of technologies that enhance the quality of lives of disabled and older persons.
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Access to Computers
This project is a virtual coach. The goal is to to demonstrate a computer dynamically adjusting to changes in human ability.
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Activity Virtual Coach
We are creating a coach that provides reminders, trend information, and just-in-time feedback about daily activity.
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Cognitive Coach
We are creating a coach that provides cognitive support to elders with episodic memory impairment.
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Direct Brain Interface
The overall goal of this project is to develop the prototype of a brain-computer interface (BCI) system based on electrocorticography (ECoG) and test its feasibility on patients with severe motor disabilities through the collective effort of investigators across multiple institutions, such as University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Washington University in St. Louis and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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DriveCap
The DriveCap project seeks to extend the reach of driver rehabilitation specialists and collect driver capability metrics utilizing low cost sensor technologies.
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DriveCap Navigator
This system is a special case of DriveCap that solely focuses on transforming traditional safety agnostic and somewhat uniform in-vehicle navigation approaches into a something that directly supports safer driving at a personalized level.
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Enhanced Remote Data Logging for Electric Powered Wheelchairs - Phase II

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Feedback Distortion for Rehabilitation

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Grand Challenge
The goal of this project is to collect a large dataset of daily activities, such as cooking, and to make the dataset freely available on the web for experiments in activity recognition and monitoring.
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Identifying Leading Indicators
It's hard to get people to imagine the types of sensors and environments that we are trying to build. However, if we can bring people into "model" instrumented environments, then we should get much better feedback.
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Intelligent Robotic Walker
Walkers provide an ideal platform for development of novel mobile robots capable of helping an individual safely navigate both the physical and social environment, with possible secondary gains in balance, stamina, and mood.
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Knowledge Repository for Data and Measurement Tools
We are setting up structured databases that capture quality of life outcomes, enable modeling of product acceptance, and provide tools that others might use to pursue the QoLT agenda.
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Learning
The long-term objective is to be able to learn predictive models of activities from training sensor data which can be used to predict actions and behaviors based on live data.
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Long-Term Care and Technology: Stakeholder Perspectives
The project is developing a sound understanding of stakeholders' views, attitudes and beliefs about QoLT technologies so that implementation and utilization of these cost-effective health assessment and monitoring tools will be fully realized.
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Mental Models of New Technology
This project aims to understand how people conceptualize and use everyday technologies as a foundation for informing new technologies.
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Modeling of Trips
Our specific aim in this project is to understand the postural strategies used in trips and the biomechanical factors that cause trips-precipitated falls.
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Modeling Seated Parameters
We are developing a SmartSeat capable of measure state parameters of the skin and varying the state so that physiologic data can be collected under varying degrees of stress.
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Modeling System Access to Computers and Electronics
The central goals of this project are to develop models of both users and use contexts that are flexible in the face of the natural dynamism of the human-system interface, and demonstrate their value with adaptive software that can take advantage of them.
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PerMMA
The objective of PerMMA is to combine manipulation and mobility assistance with perception and decision making wherever a person goes.
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Personal Agency
We are working to build computer software that is able to automatically detect when a user is having difficulty using a computer and automatically deploy software to assist them.
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Personal Robotic Assistants for the Elderly

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Predicting Learning Curves
This project serves as a foundation for developing a framework of how people view their own ability to learn to use new QoLT products as they grow in experience. Our focus is on the factors that influence the adoption and usage of new products.
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Prescription
Techniques and languages appropriate for clinicians and care givers to instruct the coaches on the desired behaviors and activities for the person to be coached.
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QoLT Mine: Creating a Knowledge Base
QoLT Mine captures, documents, combines and analyzes the relevant research and published literature on all aspects of the QoLT initiative.
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Recognition
The goal of the project is to develop the techniques necessary for understanding the user's environment based on sensor data.
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Seating Coach
We are researching sensing and recognition of seated postures and determining physical location and context using wheelchair mounted sensors and machine learning.
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Sensing
The goal of the project is to develop new approaches to sensing, such as "inside-out" vision in which the system experiences the environment and the user's behavior from the user's point of view.
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Smart Wheelchairs
We will develop a modular set of sensor and control modules that convert standard power wheelchairs into smart wheelchairs that provide navigation assistance to their users. We will then develop shared control schemes that combine robotic navigation and collision avoidance with the user's inputs.
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Soft Interaction
The goal of this project is to develop ways for robots to physically interact safely with humans.
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Testbed Access
Developing QoLT successfully requires that we have access to a wide range of community settings where these technologies can be evaluated and tested.
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Vehicle Transformation
This project's goal is to conduct basic research that enables safer driving through key design and vehicle control improvements.
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