Development of Wheel Chair With Center Articulated Body and Autonomous Control System

Abstract

Our research object is to develop a wheel chair that is able to climb up and down stairs. Conventional wheel chairs use a parallel two-wheel type mobile base that is effective for moving on even surfaces but has limited clearance, posing difficulties in climbing over obstacles. In IROS2014, authors proposed and demonstrated an Octal Wheel unit that has 8 wheels with link-mechanisms and is able to climb up and down stairs. This robot is just a prototype to show the effectiveness of the mechanism. This research has begun to develop an AR chair that is able to carry a passenger, move autonomously, and climb up and down stairs. The first step of the AR chair project is to develop and construct a wheel chair with a center articulated body. The 8-wheel mechanism is applied to the AR chair model after the construction of an autonomous system. A control system with 3D LIDAR was installed on the prototype and it autonomously moved 1.4km in the Real World Robotics Challenge (RWRC) 2014 in Tsukuba on the official pedestrian road. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.