Reaching analysis of wheelchair users using motion planning methods

Abstract

For an environment to be well suited for wheelchair use not only should it be sufficiently clear of obstacles so that the wheelchair can navigate it, it should also be properly designed so that critical devices such as light switches can be reached by the hand of the wheelchair user. Given a goal location, explicitly calculating a path of the wheelchair and the person sitting in it so that they can reach the goal is not a trivial task. In this paper, we augment a Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT) planner with a goal region generation stage that encourages the RRT to grow toward configurations from which the wheelchair user can reach the goal point. The approach is demonstrated on simulated 3D environments. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.