Evaluation of Accelerometer Control Interface with Powered Wheelchair

This paper deals with the problem of control of the wheelchair by people, who either is not able or have difficulties with moving and mechanically interacting with objects using their limbs (due to some kind of nervous system disease or trauma). There are different ways, how to receive data from that kind of patient, for example, electroencephalography, myoelectric interface, or accelerometer plus gyroscope interface. It was chosen to test one type of powered wheelchair control interface-accelerometer interface. For this purpose, conventional joystick interface was replaced with accelerometer interface, where two accelerometers are used to control wheelchair-one accelerometer is used to control the wheelchair's movement, the other one is used to measure the momental speed of the wheelchair. In the wheelchair two DC motors were used, to control them a workbench with two H-bridge motor control shields was developed.