Abstract
People who suffer from any kind of motor difficulty face serious complications to autonomously move in their daily lives. However, a growing number research projects which propose different powered wheelchairs control systems are arising. Despite of the interest of the research community in the area, there is no platform that allows an easy integration of various control methods that make use of heterogeneous sensors and computationally demanding algorithms. In this work, an architecture based on virtual organizations of agents is proposed that makes use of a flexible and scalable communication protocol that allows the deployment of embedded agents in computationally limited devices. In order to validate the proper functioning of the proposed system, it has been integrated into a conventional wheelchair and a set of alternative control interfaces have been developed and deployed, including a portable electroencephalography system, a voice interface or as specifically designed smartphone application. A set of tests were conducted to test both the platform adequacy and the accuracy and ease of use of the proposed control systems yielding positive results that can be useful in further wheelchair interfaces design and implementation.
Highlights
It is well known by all the problem that people with motor disabilities face to autonomously move in their daily lives
This paper presents a platform based on virtual organizations (VO) of agents that enables the rapid integration of different human-machine interfaces in a conventional motorized wheelchair
It is necessary to pass the signal to the frequency domain in order to be able to better recognize the patterns within each signal, just as it is performed in work [46]
Summary
It is well known by all the problem that people with motor disabilities face to autonomously move in their daily lives. According to the World Health Organization, around 10% of the world’s population suffers some type of disability (either physical or mental), of which around 10% need a wheelchair to move [1]. One of the most relevant initiatives is the declaration by the United Nations (UN) of the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities [3], which helped to put this problem in the spotlight, leading the way to the creation of other new initiatives in the field of the integration of people with disabilities. A proof of this fact is the wide variety of options that are currently offered by wheelchair manufacturers. Within these control interfaces, two types are clearly differentiated: proportional controls and non-proportional controls [13].
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