Head-movement interface for wheelchair driving based on inertial sensors

EasyChair Preprint no. 841

Abstract

Powered wheelchairs provide the only means of mobility for many people with severe motor disabilities. When the lower and upper limbs are affected, available interfaces may be impossible or very difficult to use, or 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 movements of the head, admitting different null-positions of the head depending on user’s posture, and allows continuous direction and speed commands to drive the wheelchair. Though, the development of an inertial interface for driving a wheelchair presents several challenges, namely, it must deal with: 1) the simultaneous movements of the head and wheelchair, each one with its own coordinate system; and 2) the unconstrained free-movements of the head. Therefore, the two coordinate systems need to be combined and several safety procedures are required to ensure only admissible commands. In this paper we describe the overall implementation and preliminary experiments that show the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

Keyphrases: Assitive robotics, Head-movement interface, Inertial Measurement Unit, motor disabilities, Wheelchair

@Booklet{EasyChair:841,
  author = {Daniel Gomes and Filipe Fernandes and Eduardo Castro and Gabriel Pires},
  title = {Head-movement interface for wheelchair driving based on inertial sensors},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 841},
  doi = {10.29007/6dtj},
  year = {EasyChair, 2019}}