Electric Wheelchair Hybrid Operating System Coordinated with Working Range of a Robotic Arm

Abstract

Electric wheelchair-mounted robotic arms can help patients with disabilities to perform their activities in daily living (ADL). However, to stop the wheelchairs in an appropriate position for the robotic arm grasping task is not easy for the patients with upper limb dysfunction. In order to reduce the individual's burden in operating wheelchair in narrow spaces and to ensure that the wheelchair always stops within the working range of a robotic arm. This study presents an operating system for an electric wheelchair that can automatically drive itself to within the working range of a robotic arm by capturing the position of an AR marker via a chair-mounted camera. Meanwhile, in order to correct the accumulated moving error of electric wheelchair, the system also include the error prediction and correction model to correct the wheelchair's moving error without modelling the electric wheelchair. Finally, comparing the wheelchair's moving track demonstrates the effectiveness of the model for predicting and correcting movement errors. Simulating the robotic arm across serval courses demonstrates that the proposed system can cause the wheelchair to halt in the proper position to finish the grasping work. To compared with the previous research, we correct the moving error modifying the trajectory of electric wheelchair which keeps the AR marker in the visual field during the hole running process, which fundamentally solved this problem.