Towards a New Modality-Independent Interface for a Robotic Wheelchair

TEODIANO FREIRE BASTOS; FERNANDO A. AUAT CHHEIN; SANDRAMARA TORRES MÜLLER; WANDERLEY CARDOSO CELESTE; CELSO DE LA CRUZ; DANIEL CRUZ CAVALIERI; MÁRIO SARCINELLI-FILHO; PAULO FARIA SANTOS AMARAL; ELISA PEREZ; CARLOS M SORIA; RICARDO CARELLI

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL SYSTEMS AND REHABILITATION ENGINEERING

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2014

1534-4320

This work presents the development of a roboticwheelchair that can be commanded by users in a supervisedway or by a fully automatic unsupervised navigation system. Itprovides flexibility to choose different modalities to command thewheelchair, in addition to be suitable for people with differentlevels of disabilities. Users can command the wheelchair based ontheir eye blinks, eye movements, head movements, by sip-and-puffand through brain signals. The wheelchair can also operate like anauto-guided vehicle, following metallic tapes, or in an autonomousway. The systemis provided with an easy to use and flexible graphicaluser interface onboard a personal digital assistant, which isused to allow users to choose commands to be sent to the roboticwheelchair. Several experiments were carried out with peoplewith disabilities, and the results validate the developed system asan assistive tool for people with distinct levels of disability.