Trajectory Path Tracking Evaluation of Smart Wheelchair By Image Processing Technique

Abstract

Electrically powered wheelchair has basically two features, one is mechanical based movement system, and another is electrical drive to ease maneuvering rather than manually driven by assistant. In smart wheelchairs, third feature is added that would further simplify driving of powered wheelchair by conventional methods. In the recent years, IoT (Internet-of-Things) are dramatically changing the lifestyle of people which are being used not only for entertainment but also for actuating external devices as per their requirements. Smart phones are almost commonly being used by many people since they are affordable and are being added with multiple features like camera, video games, messaging, navigation facility and many more. We have previously developed a mobile phone application software to control the movement of an electrically powered wheelchair, thus making it as a smart wheelchair. In this paper, we reported the performance evaluation of the wheelchair control through the mobile app. A reference trajectory path was marked on the floor area and a route map was prepared on the Google Maps browser in the smart phone. The user of the wheelchair navigated its movement between source and destination points on the map to follow the reference track. The motion of wheelchair and the track was captured in a video clip. Then, by image processing technique, the wheelchair movement was tracked. It has been observed that during perpendicular turnings like corners inside the buildings or turnings on roads, there were slight deviations of the wheelchair with respect to the reference path. However, this can be minimized by proper training to the person using the smart wheelchair.