Navigation assistance to disabled persons with powered wheelchairs using tracking system and cloud computing technologies

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel approach for secure navigation of wheelchairs. The approach is based on a combination of robotic road train based navigation and Cloud Computing technologies. The navigation strategy is inspired from elephants. Marching trunk to tail, each wheelchair in a platoon takes cues from the wheelchair just in front of it. The leader of navigation is a person. The cloud computing technologies are used to share wheelchairs positions and to send notifications to caregiver. The role of the caregiver is to lead navigation and to watch in real time the navigation progress and to control the system navigation when problems occur. To improve tracking process, two approaches of obstacle detection and avoidance were developed. Some experimental results are given in the paper to demonstrate the feasibility and performance of the developed system.