Multi-sensor robotic-wheelchair controller for handicap and quadriplegia patients using embedded technologies

Nowadays, there is a significant increase in the number of older persons in all countries of the world. This segment of society, as well as patients with quadriplegia and amputee's hands, lost the ability to use their arms to control traditional wheelchair which is controlled by Joystick. They need to use special control systems to control robotic-wheelchairs. In this paper, the design and development of a multi-input control system for rehabilitation application are proposed. The multi-input makes the system more flexible to adapt to the available body signals which are used as a control signal for the intelligent application. The first input is a voice controller unit. It consists of two voice recognition modules. Each module has a different algorithm for voice processing. The two modules have been combined into one unit and work parallel to enhance the voice recognition accuracy and reduce the voice recognition errors. The second input is the head orientation control unit. It uses the user head movement around x, y and z-axes to control the wheelchair movements in all directions. It includes two orientation modules, each one having three MEMS sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer) combined to get accurate orientation in the form of Euler angles. The head tilts controller includes an auto-calibrated algorithm that calibrates the head orientation in case of non-straight roads. The system is flexible to change between the two controllers depending on user requirements.