Development of Navigation Technology of Intelligent Electric Powered Wheelchair for Seriously Handicapped Person of Vertebra Damage
In general, electric powered wheelchair is used for handicapped persons as a means of movement. Electric powered wheelchair is controlled via joystick, which means that seriously handicapped person as vertebra damaged person can not use the general electric powered wheelchair. In this paper, a new navigation method for an intelligent electric powered wheelchair is proposed, which is very simple to implement by using the robotic technology. Two cameras are used in the system. The one is used for detecting obstacles in front of the wheelchair, and the other is used for detecting the intention of the user by measuring the movement of the head. A series of experiments are performed to evaluate the proposed method and the experimental results show that the proposed method can be applicable to the navigation of an intelligent electric powered wheelchair for seriously handicapped person of vertebra damage.