Robotic wheelchair with three control modes

With the increase of senior citizens, there is a growing demand for human-friendly wheelchairs as mobility aids. The paper proposes the concept of a robotic wheelchair to meet this need. It has three motion control modes. One is an autonomous control mode. The wheelchair has autonomous navigation capabilities, such as avoiding obstacles and moving straight toward a target object or along a corridor using ultrasonic and vision sensors. Another is a manual control mode with minimum intentional operations. The wheelchair observes the user's face by vision, moving in the direction indicated by the use's face movements. The third is a remote control mode. When the user is not riding, it can find him/her using face recognition. The user can make it come or go by hand gestures. We have developed an experimental robotic wheelchair based on the above concept. Experimental results prove our approach promising.