Abstract
In social situations, people who use a powered wheelchair must divide their attention between navigating the chair and conversing with people. These conversations could lead to increased mental stress when navigating and distraction from maneuvering the chair. As a solution that maintains a good conversation distance between the wheelchair and the accompanying person (Social Following), a wheelchair control system was developed to provide automated side-by-side following by wirelessly connecting the wheelchair to the person. Two ultrasonic range sensors and three piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers were used to identify the accompanying person and determine their position and heading. Identification involved an ultrasonic beacon worn on the person’s side, at hip level, and receivers on the wheelchair. A drive control algorithm maintained a constant conversation distance along the person’s trajectory. A plug-and-play prototype was developed and connected to a Permobil F5 Corpus wheelchair with a modified Eightfold Technologies SmartChair Remote. Results demonstrated that the system can navigate a wheelchair based on the accompanying person’s trajectory, which is advantageous for users who require hands-free wheelchair control during social activities.
Highlights
Traditional joystick-controlled powered wheelchairs require users to understand their surroundings, perceive space, and physically control the joystick [1]
This paper proposes a plug and play powered wheelchair control system to wirelessly tether the wheelchair to follow alongside an accompanying person (AP)
This research successfully demonstrated that a prototype prototype ultrasonic-tethering approach approach is is viable viable for generating control ultrasonic-tethering control signals signals to to initiate initiate and and maintaining maintaining casualproxemic proxemiccommunication communicationdistance distance between between the the AP and powered wheelchair casual wheelchair user
Summary
Traditional joystick-controlled powered wheelchairs require users to understand their surroundings, perceive space (depth/color), and physically control the joystick [1]. Thirty-one percent of persons with mobility disorders are frequently depressed due to these factors [2] Another issue is ‘distracted navigation’, which could lead to accidents such as tipping/falling and bumping into curbs, trees, or persons [4,5]. Recent advances in wheelchair technology have enabled smart wheelchairs (SW), an extension of powered wheelchairs that use an embedded computer and sensor systems to assist navigation [6]. This intelligent assistive device incorporates technology from autonomous mobile robots and requires minimum user involvement for navigation. In this research, tethering is defined as the process of human-following to assist in powered wheelchair navigation
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