Safe and reliable intelligent wheelchair robot with human robot interaction

This paper proposes a prototype of a safe and reliable wheelchair robot with a human-robot interaction. Since the wheelchair is made for mobility aids for the handicapped, the wheelchair robot must guarantee the safety and reliability while considering the user's intention. A single color CCD camera is mounted to input user's command given by human-friendly gestures, and an array of ultrasonic sensors is used for sensing external environment configurations. We use face and hand directional gestures as the input gestures. By combining the sensory environment information with the user's command given by gestures, the planner of the wheelchair robot selects an optimal motion. We present an implemented prototype of the wheelchair robot, MR. HURI, and show experimentally that it is useful for the disabled and the elderly people.