A novel human interface of an omni-directional wheelchair

We propose a human interface of an omni-directional wheelchair based on "universal design". It aims convenient, flexible, simple and intuitive human interface without physical burdens for all users. We developed a novel human interface with touch panel display indicated the image which has an omni-directional seen from vision sensor attached on the center-top of the wheel chair. In our system, users can automatically move anywhere by only pushing the omni-view image. Our wheelchair also has the function of autonomous obstacle detection. Then, we compared the proposed system with a joystick, and questionnaire-based verification was conducted from some experiments.