Preliminary Results on Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance for Powered Wheelchair

The main objective of this paper is to develop a simulator for powered wheelchair which permits to implement different control and motion planning strategies in order to study their performance and to compare them. In simulation the wheelchair can easily be integrated in any desired environment and the algorithm under test can be implemented and tested in this virtual environment. The paper presents firstly a brief description of a general powered wheelchair, then a control algorithm for a powered wheelchair is discussed based on the position of the wheelchair rather than its velocities. A general algorithm for motion planning and obstacle avoidance is briefly talked. This algorithm calculates the next desired position based on the actual and desired final position of the wheelchair and the obstacle position, motion direction and velocity. The next desired position is then fed to the control unit which executes the command. Some simulation results will be finally presented based on existing techniques like the virtual force field technique and the vector field histogram method