Design and construction of mobility assistive hybrid automobile for impaired persons

This paper presents the design and implementation of an hybrid automobile as a mobility assistive device for impaired people. The design of the vehicle is divided into three units namely mechanical, electrical and software design. The mechanical unit is concerned with the design of vehicle structure so that the vehicle can equally be used both for indoor as well as outdoor environments. The electrical part is related to the deployment of sensors and design of hardware circuits for powering the sensors and actuators. The software unit is responsible for providing the user with different navigation modes. The validity of the designed vehicle is proven through experimentation in different environments.