Wheelchair with auto navigation for adults with physio and cognitive impairments

Abstract

Nowadays most of the family members are engaged in some job or outside activity. This has led to less attention towards the aged adults and provides necessary attention for their physical, mental and social activities. The proposed work provides assistance to the aging adults to take up their work independently with physical activities without any assistance and support of family members. The implementation is carried out using electro-mechanical devices and incorporating current technology to develop a Durable Medical Equipment (DME) embedded with few physiotherapy modules to take up self-dependent activities such as physical exercise home necessities and medicine reminders and so on. At present, there is no such system deployed with such facilities to aged adults. The system developed will assist to monitor DME dependent patients with minimum infrastructure, monitored automatically from the workplace. It automatically reminds of information about the time-based requirements such as taking of Medicine and Food by incorporating (RTC) Real Time Clock. The navigation of wheelchair is provided using ARM processor to interface i2c protocol with MEMS sensor. Vibrating motors and mechanical accessories are fixed onto the wheelchair that assists in taking care of physiotherapy exercises, for muscles and bones strengthening. Cognitive impairments can be developed by setting some images on screen and asking them to identify. Based on the response obtained from them we are able to identify the mental status also. All these activities can be monitored by the family member from their work places besides keeping a watch for any emergency needs.