Development of a Human-Friendly Omnidirectional Wheelchair with Safety, Comfort and Operability Using a Smart Interface

Book Description

1. A local map was built around the OMW by using range sensors. This local map allows knowing the distance from the OMW to the surrounding obstacles in a circle with a radius of 3 [m]. The information provided by the local map, as well as the information of velocity of the OMW were used for varying the stiffness of a haptic joystick that sents information to the hand of the occupant of the OMW. As the distance to the nearer obstacles decreases and the velocity of the OMW increases, the stiffness of the haptic joystick increases, and vice versa. By using the haptic joystick, the occupant of the OMW was able of achieving safety navigation by avoiding collision against obstacles. The sensing system to obtain the surrounding environmental information for any arbitrary direction in real time was built. The algorithm to choose only environmental information existing toward the moving direction of OMW for navigation support system...

Full description