Advanced robust tracking control of a powered wheelchair system

In this paper, the dynamic multivariable model of the wheelchair system is obtained including the presence of transportation lags. The triangular diagonal dominance (TDD) decoupling technique is applied to reduce this multivariable control problem into two independent scalar control problems. An advanced robust control technique for the wheelchair has been developed based on the combination of a TDD decoupling strategy and neural network controller design. The results obtained from the real-time implementation confirm that robust performance for this multivariable wheelchair control system can indeed be achieved.