Design and implementation of a smart wheelchair

Abstract

A smart wheelchair can restore autonomy to patients with sensori-motor disabilities by enabling them to move around freely without depending on the care givers. The objective of a smart wheelchair is to reduce user effort in controlling the wheelchair and to ensure safety during movement. In this paper, our focus is to design and develop a smart wheelchair using inexpensive hardware and open-source software so as to make it affordable to a larger section of the target population, particularly in developing nations. The user can control the wheelchair using three interfaces namely, keyboard, a webcam and a microphone. Webcam is used to detect head-tilt which can be used for turning the wheelchair. Microphone is used for controlling the wheelchair through discrete voice commands. The wheelchair can be operated in three modes namely, manual, automatic and tele-operation modes. The software and hardware architecture of the platform is described in detail and experiments are performed to demonstrate the usability of the platform.