Driving Assistance by Deictic Control for a Smart Wheelchair: The Assessment Issue

In this paper, an assessment of a driving assistance by a deictic command for a smart wheelchair is proposed. This equipment enables the user to move with a series of indications on an interface displaying a view of the environment and bringing about automatic movement of the wheelchair. Two sets of tests were implemented to assess the advantages of this type of assistance compared with conventional wheelchair control. The first set evaluated the performance of the human-machine system that is based on a course time analysis, an observation of users´ actions, and an estimation of driving comfort. The second test was implemented to assess the cognitive requirements of the driving task, specifically the attentional and executive processes required when driving in assisted mode. A dual-task method was used to achieve this. The results show that driving assistance brings about a decrease in physical load for the same level of comfort as manual driving, but requires an additional cognitive effort for the user, especially in terms of executive abilities.