Advanced user interfaces for intelligent wheelchair system

With the aging of the population and increasing number of disabled people who have mobility impairments, the interest of the research on technology for health and independence represent an importance paramount in present day. In this paper an intelligent wheelchair is developed to help these types of patients using advanced system to control the movement of wheelchair in different directions by monitoring voice commands and also the simple movement of the patient´s face. Automatic obstacle detection and avoidance is done using ultrasonic and infrared sensors which helps the patient to apply a temporary brake in case any obstacle suddenly comes in the way of the wheelchair. Also wall tracking and target tracking algorithms are developed in our wheelchair. A Fuzzy Logic Control of the wheelchair is also designed in such a way that it can be controlled easily with minimum effort from the patient. We focus the study on non conventional control algorithm implemented using a PC interfaced with an embedded microcontroller platform. Experimental results are carried out on a wheelchair platform.