Dynamic shared control for human-wheelchair cooperation

Abstract

Shared control is a common used method for human and wheelchair cooperation. However, most of the previous shared control methods didn't think much of the effect caused by the difference in the user's control ability. The control weight of a user in these methods is irrelevant to the user's capability or the driving conditions. In this paper, a dynamic shared control method is proposed to adapt wheelchair's assistance to the variations of user performance and the environmental changes. Three evaluation indices including safety, comfort and obedience are designed to evaluate wheelchair performance in real time. A minimax multi-objective optimization algorithm is adopted to calculate the user's control weight. The results of lab experiments and elderly home field tests show that this method can adapt the degree of wheelchair's autonomy to the user's control ability and it makes driving wheelchair much easier for elder people.