Gaze direction based mobile application for quadriplegia wheelchair control system

Abstract

People with quadriplegia recruit the interest of researchers in introducing automated movement systems for adopted special purpose wheelchairs. These systems were introduced for easing the movement of such type of disabled people independently. This paper proposed a comprehensive control system that can control the movement of Quadriplegia wheelchairs using gaze direction and blink detection. The presented system includes two main parts. The first part consists of a smartphone that applies the propose gaze direction detection based mobile application. It then sends the direction commands to the second part via Wi-Fi connection. The second part is a prototype representing the quadriplegia wheelchair that contains robotic car (two-wheel driving car), Raspberry Pi III and ultrasound sensors. The gaze direction commands, sent from the smartphone, are received by the Raspberry Pi for processing and producing the control signals. The ultrasound sensors are fixed at the front and back of the car for performing the emergency stop when obstacles are detected. The proposed system is based on gaze tracking and direction detection without the requirement of calibration with additional sensors and instruments. The obtained results show the superior performance of the proposed system that proves the claim of authors. The accuracy ratio is ranged between 66% and 82% depending on the environment (indoor and outdoor) and surrounding lighting as well as the smart phone type.