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Semi-autonomous
navigation of a robotic wheelchair |
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Brief description |
This work
considers the development of a wheelchair for people with special needs,
which is capable of navigating semi-autonomously within its workspace. This
system is expected to prove useful to people with impaired mobility and
limited fine motor control of the upper extremities. Among the implemented
behaviors of this robotic system are the avoidance of obstacles, the motion
in the middle of the free space and the following of a moving target
specified by the user (e.g., a person walking in front of the wheelchair).
The wheelchair is equipped with sonars, which are used for distance
measurement in pre-selected critical directions, and with a panoramic camera
with a 360 degree field of view, which is used for following a moving target.
After suitably processing the color sequence of the panoramic images using
the color histogram of the desired target, the orientation of the target with
respect to the wheelchair is determined, while its distance is determined by
the sonars. The motion control laws developed for the system use the sensory
data and take into account the non-holonomic kinematic constraints of the
wheelchair, in order to guarantee certain desired features of the closed-loop
system, such as stability. Moreover, they are as simplified as possible to
minimize implementation requirements. An experimental prototype has been
developed at ICS–FORTH, based on a commercially-available wheelchair. The
sensors, the computing power and the electronics needed for the
implementation of the navigation behaviors and of the user interfaces (touch
screen, voice commands) were developed as add-on modules and integrated with
the wheelchair. |
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Contributions |
Antonis Argyros, Pantelis Georgiadis, Dimitris Tsakiris, Panos Trahanias. |
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Sample results |
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Sample
results on human tracking based on panoramic vision. |
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Sample
behaviour of the wheelchair in a dynamic environment |
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Related publications
and documents |
·
A.A. Argyros, P. Georgiades,
P. Trahanias, D. Tsakiris “Semi-autonomous Navigation of a Robotic
Wheelchair”, Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, Special Issue on
Medical and Rehabilitation Robotics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Vol. 34, pp.
315–329, July 2002. ·
A.A. Argyros, P. Georgiades, P. Trahanias, D. Tsakiris “Semi-Autonomous Navigation
of a Robotic Wheelchair”, in proceedings of the KTISIVIOS Panhellenic Conference in Robotics and Automation,
Santorini, Greece, July 28-29, 2001. The electronic versions of the above publications can be downloaded
from my publications
page. |
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Last update |
31 January 2005,
Antonis Argyros, argyros@ics.forth.gr |
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