Wheelchair driving control with sway suppression of passenger´s posture and evaluation of comfortable ride by emotional sweating

This paper presents an advanced control system for a driving control system of an electrical wheelchair. The aim of the control system is to make possible a comfortable ride in the wheelchair. For this, a passenger model that uses a backrest in the wheelchair has been constructed and a driving pattern that suppresses a passenger´s posture behavior has been developed using optimization methods. Then, the quality of the ride whiles a passenger drives the wheelchair has been evaluated by a questionnaire and by measurements of emotional sweating. In comparison with the conventional driving pattern, the proposed driving pattern suppresses about half of the passenger´s previous posture behavior and improves the comfort of wheelchair driving.