Data collection system for the navigation of wheelchair users: A preliminary report

Abstract

In Japan, population of aged people is becoming greater. According to it, number of the wheelchair user would become larger. The government has being improved to lessen the barriers for these people. But depending on the physical power of wheel chair users, it was pointed out that there could be the places where they could not move by their physical power. This is a reason that many wheelchair users do not move by their alone. Therefore we tried to develop the navigation system to eliminate the problem. At the beginning we have developed the system to measure the required force to move the wheelchair, the width of the space of aisle where they could turn back the direction, and the position information. By the data base, we planned to develop the navigation system for wheelchair users who could move alone to working places or other places where they want to go. In this paper, we report the system developed to collect data for navigation of wheelchair users. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.