Experimental Study on User Acceptance and Affordability of Intelligent Wheelchair - Questionnaires on Human Machine Interface

We proposed the use of an intelligent wheelchair for new mobility for not only elderly people but also everyone. Our intelligent wheelchair has autonomous function and new gesture interface. For the introduction of the proposed intelligent wheelchair, there are several challenges associated with the use of the wheelchair. One of the most important points is the user acceptance, and it must be investigated with a plenty of subjects by experiments. In addition, the affordability is also important for the introduction. The two points were investigated by performing the several experiments with subjects. In the experiments, we did a questionnaire about the intelligent wheelchair. In this paper, we introduce experiments and the questionnaire results, and the results are compared and discussed in this paper. The questionnaire results proved that most subjects had the favorable opinions about autonomous function and new gesture interfaces. On the other hand, the challenging issues for improving the user acceptance of intelligent wheelchair were also found especially for the gesture interface. These results must be valuable for developers and researchers of new wheelchairs.