User Involvement in Robotic Wheelchair Development: A Decade of Limited Progress

TL;DR

This review highlights that user involvement in robotic wheelchair development over the past decade has been minimal, mostly limited to late-stage testing, with systemic barriers hindering meaningful engagement.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of end-user involvement in robotic wheelchair research, revealing its limited scope and proposing the need for systemic change.

Findings

Only 6% of studies involved verifiable end-user participation.

Most research was engineering-led with small, non-representative samples.

User involvement was mostly in late-stage evaluation, not early design phases.

Abstract

Robotic wheelchairs (RWs) offer significant potential to enhance autonomy and participation for people with mobility impairments, yet many systems have failed to achieve sustained real-world adoption. This narrative literature review examined the extent and quality of end-user involvement in RW design, development, and evaluation over the past decade (2015--2025), assessed against core principles shared by major user-involvement approaches (e.g., user-/human-centered design, participatory/co-design, and inclusive design). The findings indicate that user involvement remains limited and is predominantly concentrated in late-stage evaluation rather than in early requirements definition or iterative co-design. Of the 399 records screened, only 23 studies (about 6%) met the inclusion criteria of verifiable end-user involvement, and many relied on small samples, often around ten participants, with limited justification for sample size selection, proxy users, laboratory-based validation, and non-standardized feedback methods. Research teams were largely engineering-dominated (about 89%) and geographically concentrated in high-income countries. Despite strong evidence that sustained user engagement improves usability and adoption in assistive technology, its systematic implementation in RW research remains rare. Advancing the field requires embedding participatory methodologies throughout the design lifecycle and addressing systemic barriers that constrain meaningful user involvement.