HandiViz project: Clinical validation of a driving assistance for electrical wheelchair

Abstract

Autonomy and independence in daily life, whatever the impairment of mobility, constitute fundamental needs that participate to the self-esteem and the well-being of disabled people. In this context, assistive technologies are a relevant answer. To address the driving assistance issue, we propose in this paper a unified shared control framework able to smoothly correct the trajectory of the electrical wheelchair. The system integrates the manual control with sensor-based constraints by means of a dedicated optimization strategy. The resulting low-complex and low-cost embedded system is easily plugged onto on-the-shelf wheelchairs. The robotic solution has been then validated through clinical trials that have been conducted within the Rehabilitation Center of Pôle Saint Hélier (France) with 25 volunteering patients presenting different disabling neuro-pathologies. This assistive tool is shown to be intuitive and robust as it respects the user intention, it does not alter perception while reducing the number of collisions in case of hazardous maneuvers or in crowded environment.

Probabilistic Shared Control for a Smart Wheelchair: A Stochastic Model-Based Framework

“…The latter will interpret it as a signal coming from a joystick. This prototype was developed by the team of INSA Rennes [4].…”

“…It is interesting to note that much of this research employed a technique called linear blending which combines linearly the user's demand and the actions of a high-level algorithm. Essentially, the final command is a weighted sum between the two, and various methods have been proposed to optimize these weights [1]- [4]. Trautman demonstrated theoretically that a probabilistic approach is superior to linear blending in terms of safety: linear blending does not guarantee safety mathematically [5].…”

Analysis of an adaptive strategy for equitably approaching and joining human interactions

“…The second scenario involves the robot tasked with joining a group in the presence of dynamic humans. An ultrasoundbased reactive collision avoidance mechanism [25] was employed on top of the proposed motion strategy. The collision avoidance mechanism essentially constrains the velocities coming from the velocity controller (3) using information coming from the sensors.…”

Assisting power wheelchair driving on a sidewalk: A proof of concept

“…The proposed method is based on the same mathematical principle as the approach presented in [14] which application has been until now restricted to indoor navigation assistance as the detection of negative obstacles was not ensured yet. This method has been tested and validated by wheelchair regular users within clinical trials whhich have been conducted within the Pôle Saint Hé lier rehabilitation center in Rennes [14,16]. In this paper, we propose to apply this principle to navigation on a sidewalk by considering detected drop-offs as virtual positive obstacles in the horizontal plane thus leading the wheelchair to progressively correct its trajectory to avoid the curbside the same way it avoids colliding with a wall.…”