In social situations, people who use a powered wheelchair must divide their attention between navigating the chair and conversing with people. As a solution that maintains a good conversation distance between the wheelchair and the accompanying person, a wheelchair control system was introduced to provide automated side-by-side following by wirelessly tethering the wheelchair to the person.
This thesis designed, developed, and evaluated a wireless tethering system using ultrasonic sensors. Two ping sensors and three piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers were used to identify the accompanying person and determine their pose. A trajectory algorithm determined the person’s direction of motion and a drive control algorithm determined the wheelchair’s required direction by maintaining a comfortable conversation distance between the person and the wheelchair user. A plug-and-play prototype was developed using commercially available components and the firmware was implemented using an open-source platform. The prototype developed in this thesis was mounted to a Permobil F3 Corpus powered wheelchair with a modified Eightfold Technologies SmartChair Remote, which controlled the wheelchair direction.
Results demonstrated that the system can navigate a wheelchair beside an accompanying person and maintain a comfortable conversation distance, which is advantageous for users who require hands-free wheelchair control during social activities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/39379 |
| Date | 05 July 2019 |
| Creators | Pingali, Theja Ram |
| Contributors | Lemaire, Edward, Baddour, Natalie |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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