Navigation of a Novel Wheelchair Designed for Multi-level Surfaces

Persons with disabilities experience difficulties when navigating in areas with multiple levels. In scenarios such as entering or exiting of public transport systems, they are forced to relay on caregiver support. The challenge to board a train compartment in railway stations is significantly higher. The scope of this work is to introduce a novel design for a wheelchair which will provide mechanisms for entraining and detraining. Additionally, the wheelchair is equipped with a vision sensor that can help detect the train compartment door and generate a path to it. After reaching the door, the wheelchair entrains the compartment autonomously using an entraining sequence. The door is detected using an object detection model which plots a bounding box where the door is located. Using the bounding box coordinates, the position of the door relative to the wheelchair is estimated. The path generated is an optimized one so as to move the wheelchair efficiently towards the compartment door.