A Study on the Electric Wheelchair Hands-Free Control System using the Laser Range Scanner

This paper presents a semi-automatic control system for electric wheelchair using laser range scanner. The user of this system is supposed as severe disabilities paraplegic who cannot move the body under the neck. They can use the surface electromyography (s-EMG) of the facial muscle for controlling the electric wheelchair. When they are controlling the electric wheelchair with the s-EMG signals, to avoid the obstacle is difficult. Therefore, we developed the semi-automatic assist system for avoiding the obstacle. The proposed system is composed by laser range scanner. The electric wheelchair could increase safety by using our proposed assist system. We tried the experiments of driving in the hallway of the building. Our proposed system was confirmed that the electric wheelchair did not clash with the hallway of the building.