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Development of a Modular Real-time Shared-control System for a Smart Wheelchair

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a modular navigation system that can be mounted on a regular powered wheelchair to assist disabled children and the elderly with autonomous mobility and shared-control features. The lack of independent mobility drastically affects an individual’s mental and physical health making them feel less self-reliant, especially children with Cerebral Palsy and limited cognitive skills. To address this problem, we propose a comparatively inexpensive and modular system that uses a stereo camera to perform tasks such as path planning, obstacle avoidance, and collision detection in environments with narrow corridors. We avoid any major changes to the hardware of the wheelchair for an easy installation by replacing wheel encoders with a stereo camera for visual odometry. An open source software package, the Real-Time Appearance Based Mapping package, running on top of the Robot Operating System (ROS) allows us to perform visual SLAM that allows mapping and localizing itself in the environment. The path planning is performed by the move base package provided by ROS, which quickly and efficiently computes the path trajectory for the wheelchair. In this work, we present the design and development of the system along with its significant functionalities. Further, we report experimental results from a Gazebo simulation and real-world scenarios to prove the effectiveness of our proposed system with a compact form factor and a single stereo camera.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

References

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Funding

This project was internally funded by Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovations at Children’s National Medical Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland at College Park, Maryland, USA

    Vaishanth Ramaraj, Atharva Paralikar, Eung Joo Lee, Syed Muhammad Anwar & Reza Monfaredi

Authors
  1. Vaishanth Ramaraj
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  2. Atharva Paralikar
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  3. Eung Joo Lee
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  4. Syed Muhammad Anwar
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  5. Reza Monfaredi
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Contributions

Vaishanth Ramaraj implemented the ROS based control system. Vaishanth Ramaraj and Atharva Chandrashekhar Paralikar contributed to the system integration and the hardware implementation. Eung-Joo Lee provided technical supports on the real-time aspects of the project. Syed Muhammad Anwar provided technical supports on image processing aspect of the project and Reza Monfaredi provided technical supports on system integration and shared control system.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vaishanth Ramaraj.

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Ramaraj, V., Paralikar, A., Lee, E. et al. Development of a Modular Real-time Shared-control System for a Smart Wheelchair. J Sign Process Syst 96, 203–214 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-022-01828-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-022-01828-6

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