Sip-and-Puff controlled wheelchairs enable individuals with severe disabilities to gain some mobility and autonomy. However, Sip-and-Puff controlled wheelchairs are cumbersome to use, causing fatigue and discomfort after prolonged use. To remedy this issue, an autonomous wheelchair with a Sip-and-Puff interface is proposed. An improved design, that requires the Sip-and-Puff device to select a destination, is presented in this paper. Once the destination is selected, further input is not required since the autonomous navigation system performs the navigation to the destination. Ten trials were conducted to test the autonomous navigation capabilities of the new wheelchair. The wheelchair successfully navigated the path of 10.26 meters in 100% of the trials with no collisions. The average time to navigate to the destinations was 28.6 seconds. Ten trials were conducted to test the Sip-and-Puff device as well as the efficacy of the user interface. The average time to select a destinations using the Sip-and-Puff device was 6.3 seconds. The average time for the user to cancel navigation and select a new destination was 4.86 seconds. These results show promise of greatly improving usability compared to conventional Sip-and-Puff controlled wheelchairs. The destination selection time and rerouting times are shorter due to the simple design of user interface and the overall navigation times are shorter due to the autonomous navigation system.
Sip-and-Puff Autonomous Wheelchair for Individuals with Severe Disabilities
2018-11-01
1497483 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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