Integrated motion control of a wheelchair in the longitudinal, lateral and pitch directions

The motion of a wheelchair is different from any other vehicles. It needs controlling in the three dimensions: the longitudinal direction, the lateral direction, and the pitch direction. This paper provides this three-dimensional control of a wheelchair taking user´s manipulation into considerations. A power-assisted wheelchair is the main target of this paper. Three controls for all directions are combined to provide excellent assistance to a user. To this end, for the longitudinal and lateral directions, disturbance attenuation control is designed. For the pitch direction, tip-over protection control is designed. Lastly, we demonstrate all these controls can work independently for each purpose