Smart mind-based approach to control wheelchair wirelessly

Abstract

The number of elderly and disabled people worldwide has increased, and their day-to-day activities depend on others’ help. Improving the quality of life of these people has become the most important responsibility of society, and it is the role of technology specialists to make their life as normal and easy as possible so that they can perform their day-to-day activities at the relevant time without others’ help. Many researchers have proposed several solutions, but these have limitations such as poor performance and usability. Hence, there is a need to design a wheelchair that is smart and easy to use for the elderly and people with partial or full quadriplegia. In this paper, we propose a smart mind-based wireless controlled wheelchair (SMWCW) approach that completely controls the motion of a wheelchair wirelessly through brain signals and eye blinks to help partially quadriplegic individuals to perform their daily activities easily. In SMWCW, NeuroSky’s electroencephalography (EEG) device is used by users sitting on the wheelchair to capture brain activity and the frequency of eye blinks, and it translates these data into movement commands using an Arduino microcontroller unit that is directly connected to the wheelchair to move the wheelchair. The proposed approach has been simulated, and results show its effectiveness and applicability for use by most physically disabled persons.