Architecture of a virtual reality and semantics-based framework for the return to work of wheelchair users

Abstract

Being reintegrated at work after an accident constitutes an important milestone to recover a good quality of life, especially for severely injured people forced on a wheelchair after a trauma. The presented framework exploits virtual reality technologies with the aim of supporting these people in gaining awareness of their new conditions, providing them training in simulated and riskless environments. During the training, that addresses key aspects related to mobility, upper body preservations and return to work, the behaviors of the users are tracked to assess their functional level. The evaluation of these data, in addition to the expertise of the clinical personnel, is used to determine the wheelchairs user’s health condition, which is properly formalized in a semantic data model. This model then allows inferring the jobs that are still suitable for each specific user and the most appropriate level of difficulty of the tasks proposed in the virtual environments.