Development of intelligent wheelchair system with face and gaze based interface

Electric wheelchairs are important locomotion devices for disabled and senior people, and they are becoming even more important in our aging society. Therefore safer and more comfortable "intelligent wheelchairs" are expected to be developed for practical use. Usually, the control of wheelchair is realized by pushing a joystick to the direction to move toward, but quick and safe operation is needed to cope with the surrounding dynamic environments. From this point of view, an "intelligent wheelchair" should have the ability to reduce the load on the user. We propose a wheelchair system which has an intuitive interface using head and gaze motion of a user. The user needs only to look where he/she wants to go, and can start and stop by nodding and shaking his/her head. The system also estimates whether the user is concentrating on the operation based on the relationship between the head and gaze movement. The feasibility of the developed wheelchair system is confirmed through experiments in both indoor and outdoor environments.