Intelligent tennis wheelchair control method based on Webots platform

Abstract

As the number of handicapped people increases worldwide, electric wheelchairs are becoming the solution to enable a higher degree of independence for wheelchair users. Many researchers pay attention to how to solve the problems in daily life for the wheelchair users, rarely care for their physical exercises. In Paralympics, nearly all the athletes participate in sport events with the usual wheelchairs or electric wheelchairs which it is not suitable for sports like tennis. In this paper, we present a new prototype of an intelligent tennis wheelchair which can help people move more flexibly in the tennis game. The novel intelligent tennis wheelchair with four omnidirectional wheels installed on the bottom can move in all directions. The centre of gravity can be computed by calculating the values of four pressure sensors under the wheelchair seat, thus the orientation and velocity of wheelchair can be controlled by using human body motion. A lot of simulations have been done on the Webots platform. This paper presents the architecture of the developed system and gives some simulation results.