Head-movement interface for wheelchair driving based on inertial sensors

Powered wheelchairs provide the only means of mobility for many people with severe motor disabilities. For those with both lower and upper limbs impairment, available interfaces may be either impossible or very difficult to use, as well as not very efficient. In this paper we propose an egocentric interface based on inertial sensors placed on the user’s head. This interface is based on head movements that provide continuous direction and speed commands to steer the wheelchair, and allows an initial null-position of the head according to the natural posture of the user. However, the development of an inertial interface for driving a wheelchair presents two main challenges, namely, 1) the simultaneous movements of the head and the wheelchair, each one with its own coordinate system, and 2) the free unrestricted movement of the head. Therefore, the two coordinate systems need to be combined and several safety features are required to only ensure admissible commands. In this paper we describe the overall implementation and preliminary experiments that show the effectiveness of the proposed solution.