Development of the electric wheelchair hands-free semi-automatic control system using the surface-electromyogram of facial muscles

The goal of Human–Computer Interface (or called Human–Robot interface) research is to provide humans with a new communication channel that allows translating people’s intention states via a computer into performing specific actions. This paper presents a novel hands-free control system for controlling the electric wheelchair, which is based on Bio-signals just as surface electromyogram signals. The Bioelectric signals are picked up from facial muscles, then the Bio-signals are passed through an amplifier and a high pass filter. Motion control commands (Forward, Left, Right, Forward to the Right, Forward to the left and Stop) are classified by simple rule, and these commands are used for controlling the electric wheelchair. However, it is difficult to realize safety control and fine control using the biological signal only. In addition, we introduce the semi-automatic control system using the laser range scanner. In this paper, we report the introduction of our proposal systems and our experimental results.