Visual feedback of power assist wheelchair with visual sensitivity regulation

In this paper, novel power assist control method is proposed by using visual feedback. In our approach, the optical flow field and disparity of stereo vision are used as self-velocity estimation. Then, we define the visual sensitivity for variable optical flow utilization to realize the operational assist function such as for avoiding dynamic obstacle. By regulating visual sensitivity into the desired influence from dynamic obstacle, the human operator can feel the remote motion of the obstacle through driving force. The validity of the proposed approach is confirmed by several experimental results.