Development of a Motion Controller for the Electric Wheelchair of Quadriplegic Patients Using Head Movements Recognition

The robotic wheelchair is designed to allow independent movement for patients with severe musculoskeletal and neuromuscular disorders that interfere with normal wheelchair propulsion by hands. Control of the movement of the wheelchair necessities residual motion of the upper extremity which was not applicable for patients with upper extremity disability as in Quadriplegic patients. Several research efforts have been proposed to help quadriplegic patients independently use the robotic wheelchair. However, the proposed solutions had many problems with accuracy, simplicity, and cost. The current work aims to build an accurate, simple, and low-cost control system for robotic wheelchairs using head movement. The proposed system was based on the use of the MEMs inertial measurement unit (IMU) to sense the head movement gestures and transfer the gestures into signals to control the wheelchair movements. A new lightweight algorithm for the detection of head gestures was proposed to improve the system’s accuracy. The proposed system has been applied and tested on volunteers. The results revealed that the accuracy of the proposed method in recognizing head movement was 97% on average.