The Smart Wheelchair: The Need For The Smart Wheelchair

Abstract

A smart wheelchair is an intelligent wheelchair which using “smart technology” provides more for the ease and comfort of its users. Smart wheel chair is really necessary in today’s world as the differently abled persons are rendered dependent in a way, which makes them lose their confidence and the desire to do new things. In this paper, we are going to discuss about new technologies which can make this highly advanced technology available to people at a comparatively lower cost. The main areas of focus for our research has been mainly ease of use and cost. We also discuss about

Keywords: Smart wheelchair, intelligent wheelchair, smart technology, cost, differently abled people Need for the smart wheel chair

According to an

A motion detector is often integrated as a component of a system that automatically performs a task or alerts a user of motion in an area. An electronic motion detector in the wheelchair contains an optical or acoustic sensor, changes in which are interpreted by electronics based on one of the technologies listed below:

1. Infrared (IR) sensor

2. Ultrasonic

3. Gesture sensor

4. Voice sensor

Infrared Sensor

This transducer senses its surroundings by emitting and/or detecting infrared radiation (invisible electromagnetic radiation with longer wavelengths than those of visible light). They can also detect the person’s skin temperature through emitted black body radiation.

The “eye-blink sensor” is based on the IR sensor’s principle. The person’s blink would cause a variation in the sensor’s output, which is further transferred as output to the alarm logical circuit.

Status of Eye Output

Open 0

Closed 1

Table 1: Truth table for the working of the eye-blink sensor

Figure 1: Process of eye-blink sensor

This makes use of the control software using a Webcam and some distances and presence sensors controlled by a PIC microcontroller that establishes the communication with the logic circuit with the help of a program. A MEMS accelerometer is used here (it is an apparatus, either mechanical or electromechanical, for measuring acceleration or deceleration - that is, the rate of increase or decrease in the velocity of a moving object acceleration or one of its derivative properties such as vibration, shock, or tilt).

Conclusion

As a conclusion, we’d like to re-emphasize on the fact that this paper is solely an introductory version of our work in this field. Our final aims are, amongst a few, to build a working model of the Wheelchair we have envisioned after doing more research on the hardware, software, least cost requiring materials, and