Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Sensor-based navigating mobile robots for people with disabilities

People with severe physical disabilities need help with everyday tasks, such as getting dressed, eating, brushing their teeth, scratching themselves, drinking, etc. They also need support to be able to work. They are usually helped by one or more persona

A Better Engineering Design: Low Cost Assistance Kit for Manual Wheelchair Users with Enhanced Obstacle Detection

This paper proposes a better engineering design of an assistance kit for manual wheelchair users. The design is aimed  to enhance the detection of obstacles in the travelling path of the wheelchair  user at low cost. This is facilitated by microcontroller and sensor technologies. The proposed design provides the intended user with obstacle detection, light detection, a light emitting diode (LED) emergency light system, and an emergency alarm system. The microcontroller is the main controller that receives input from the sensors and produces output to the light crystal display (LCD) screen, the LED emergency light system, and the emergency alarm system. An ultrasonic sensor is used to detect the presence of obstacles directly behind the wheelchair. If any obstacle exists behind the wheelchair within a set range, the system will alert the wheelchair user through different alarm sounds. In the case of absence of light, the LED emergency light system is activated and turns on a light source, which is attached to the wheelchair to provide a bright and clear path for the user. The distance between the obstacle and the wheelchair, and the status of the LED emergency light system are displayed on the LCD screen

Smart Wheelchair with Dual Control using Touchpad and Android Mobile Device

The general objective of the design was to develop a touchpad controlled Android-based electronic wheelchair. It aimed to construct the Android-based circuitry and program for the path finding mechanism of the drive system and interface the Arduino-based circuit to the electronic wheelchair setup. It was designed to evaluate the system in terms of the speed of the electronic wheelchair, reliability of the sensors to avoid obstacle, and ease of use of the wheelchair. C Programming Language was used by the system to control and manipulate the microcontroller, Gizduino AtMega644. The Android application was programmed using the Java Language and Eclipse as the IDE. Its ports were used to interface input and output devices such as the ultrasonic sensors, infrared proximity sensor, touchpad, Bluetooth module, motor and motor driver. There was a satisfactory rating for the evaluation of the system while the Android software was rated excellent as a navigational controller

An Intelligent and Low-cost Eye-tracking System for Motorized Wheelchair Control

In the 34 developed and 156 developing countries, there are about 132 million disabled people who need a wheelchair constituting 1.86% of the world population. Moreover, there are millions of people suffering from diseases related to motor disabilities, which cause inability to produce controlled movement in any of the limbs or even head.The paper proposes a system to aid people with motor disabilities by restoring their ability to move effectively and effortlessly without having to rely on others utilizing an eye-controlled electric wheelchair. The system input was images of the users eye that were processed to estimate the gaze direction and the wheelchair was moved accordingly. To accomplish such a feat, four user-specific methods were developed, implemented and tested; all of which were based on a benchmark database created by the authors.The first three techniques were automatic, employ correlation and were variants of template matching, while the last one uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Different metrics to quantitatively evaluate the performance of each algorithm in terms of accuracy and latency were computed and overall comparison is presented. CNN exhibited the best performance (i.e. 99.3% classification accuracy), and thus it was the model of choice for the gaze estimator, which commands the wheelchair motion. The system was evaluated carefully on 8 subjects achieving 99% accuracy in changing illumination conditions outdoor and indoor. This required modifying a motorized wheelchair to adapt it to the predictions output by the gaze estimation algorithm. The wheelchair control can bypass any decision made by the gaze estimator and immediately halt its motion with the help of an array of proximity sensors, if the measured distance goes below a well-defined safety margin.Comment: Accepted for publication in Sensor, 19 Figure, 3 Table

Integrating Retrofit IOT Controller With Electric Power System For Manual Wheelchair

Persons with physical injuries and disability are struggling to get through places using the conventional handwheelchair The needs of many people with disabilities can be overcome with powered wheelchair, but some portion of this community is finding it difficult to operate standard powered wheelchair due to its big in size and epensive.. This project developed a smatphone phone-controlled wheelchair along with three types of virtual controller which is Joystick control, D-pad control and Voice control through the wireless communication.. It is also equipped with obstacle (ultrasonic) avoidance notification and microcontroller controls the motor that moved the direction either FRONT, BACKWARD, LEFT and RIGHT. The main objective of this project is to facilitate and increase the movement of people who are handicapped and the ones who are not able to move freely with the implementation of IoT platform where this platform could provide data visualization and able to analyze the wheelchair maintenance management and movement. In additional, this project analyzes distinct IoT monitoring system features, including battery level remaining and temperature control. the concept succesfully developed with integration of microcontroller in which provide desired performance control  of the system to desired output with the synchronization of Internet of Thing feature

Implementation of a low cost hands free wheelchair controller

The aim of this project is to ease mobility for people with upper and lower disability in order to live independently. This paper presents the design steps and specification to a low cost hands free eye-blink controller to control and electric wheelchair. Nowadays, people are using joystick to control motorized wheelchair. The eye-blink controller technology gives an alternative solution to mobility problem; especially for the people who are quadriplegics. By interfacing eye-blink controller, the directions of the wheelchair are controlled. This report will provide the designing step, related solutions, and component details and specifications

An Infrared-Aided Lighting Control System For Physically Impaired

In recent years the need to provide greater convenience for the physically impaired community is a challenging issue: the reason being that more reliable and cost effective system are required. This paper proposes a cost effective infrared-based solution for automatic control of electrical circuitry and systems in a residential building to aid easy access for physically impaired and/or elderly people. This electronic system has been designed to meet the need of users such that it switches ON the lighting circuits on the detection of entry into a room and switches OFF the circuit as soon as the room is empty. One of the most important features of this design is the ability to automatically adjust the power consumption on the basis of human presence in a room. The device is simple both in its functionality and implementation.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v3i5.362