Dynamic shared control for human-wheelchair cooperation

Shared control is a common used method for human and wheelchair cooperation. However, most of the previous shared control methods didn´t think much of the effect caused by the difference in the user´s control ability. The control weight of a user in these methods is irrelevant to the user´s capability or the driving conditions. In this paper, a dynamic shared control method is proposed to adapt wheelchair´s assistance to the variations of user performance and the environmental changes. Three evaluation indices including safety, comfort and obedience are designed to evaluate wheelchair performance in real time. A minimax multi-objective optimization algorithm is adopted to calculate the user´s control weight. The results of lab experiments and elderly home field tests show that this method can adapt the degree of wheelchair´s autonomy to the user´s control ability and it makes driving wheelchair much easier for elder people.