Real Time Image Processing Based Obstacle Avoidance and Navigation System for Autonomous Wheelchair Application

Wheelchairs have played an important role in both disabled young people and adults not only in term of physically but also psychologically. The idea of electrical wheelchairs has been brought up and carried out as to help these disabled people to be more independent instead of always depending caregivers. However, electronics wheelchairs are not enabling for every patient such as people who have lost mobility due to brain injury or loss of limbs. Thus, the idea of Smart Wheelchair or Autonomous Wheelchair where it is intelligent enough to provide navigation with a series of navigation assistances has brought up to the table. The purpose of this project is to design a navigation system and an obstacle avoidance system for an autonomous wheelchair application. The obstacle detection system is done merely using the camera sensor with the knowledge of image processing. The techniques used are including Canny Edge Detection, Erosion and so on where algorithms are developed to identify and detect the obstacle. The navigation system is performed with the use of compass sensors where the compass calibration, compass reading and compass value comparison are done to ensure the autonomous wheelchair move in a correct direction towards the targeted destination. Enhancement of autonomous wheelchair with Internet connectivity can be achieved using our designed system for enabling Internet of Things (IoT) application on independent disable people.