Wheelchair Driving Control with Passenger's Posture Behavior Suppression and Evaluation of Comfort of Ride by Emotional Sweating

This paper presents an advanced control system for a driving control system of an electrical wheelchair. The aim of the control system is to make possible a comfortable ride in the wheelchair. For this, a passenger model that uses a backrest in the wheelchair has been constructed and a driving pattern that suppresses a passenger’s posture behavior has been developed using optimization methods. Then, the quality of the ride while a passenger drives the wheelchair has been evaluated by a questionnaire and by measurements of emotional sweating. In comparison with the conventional driving pattern, the proposed driving pattern suppresses about half of the passenger’s previous posture behavior and improves the comfort of wheelchair driving.