Solar Powered Wheel Chair for Physically Challenged People Using Surface EMG Signal

This paper presents the design of low cost solar powered wheel chair for physically challenged people. The signals necessary to maneuver the wheel chair are acquired from different muscles of the hand using surface Electromyography (sEMG) technique. The raw sEMG signals collected from upper limb muscles are processed to extract the desired direction of movement for the wheel chair. The accuracy of the extracted EMG signals is found to be relatively high. A prototype is developed and tests verified the objective functionalities. The analysis of life cycle cost of the solar powered wheel chair is presented. It is found that the proposed wheel chair is financially feasible for developing countries.