The NavChair Assistive Navigation System

Abstract

The NavChair assistive navigation system is being developed to increase the mobility of severely handicapped individuals by providing navigation assistance for a power wheelchair. During the course of developing NavChair, advances have not only been made in the technology of "smart wheelchairs," but in other areas as well. Work on the NavChair has prompted the development of an obstacle avoidance method, based on an algorithm originally designed for autonomous robots, which allows the NavChair to perform otherwise unmanageable tasks and forms the basis of an adaptive controller. A method of modeling the wheelchair operator to make control adaptation decisions has also been developed and experimentally validated as part of the research on the NavChair. This paper details this past work on the NavChair (along with experimental validation) and also presents work that is to come, which is intended to increase the versatility and functionality of the NavChair.