Comfortable driving control for electric power-assisted wheelchair on disturbance road using fuzzy algorithm

This paper describes a novel driving control scheme of electric power-assisted wheelchairs for comfortable driving on various disturbance roads. “Electric power-assisted wheelchair” which assists the driving force by electric motors is expected to be widely used as a mobility support system for elderly people and disabled people. However, the operators need to row the hand-rims with the larger power load on disturbance roads in order to obtain the enough driving velocity. For example, the wheelchair might move backward on uphill roads due to the driving torque shortage. Therefore, this study proposes fuzzy algorithm based assisted torque generation method in order to realize the comfortable driving for disturbance road. Fuzzy rules are designed from the integral value of the human input torque and driving velocity in order to improve the driving control on uphill and disturbance roads. Some driving experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed control system.