Design and realization of a novel obstacle avoidance algorithm for intelligent wheelchair bed using ultrasonic sensors

Intelligent Wheelchair Bed (IWB) is an important direction. And it is also one of the most active research direction in the robot field. In this work, the obstacle avoidance algorithm based on the Artificial Potential Field (APF) using ultrasonic sensors is proposed and realized in order to achieve the real-time and continuing obstacle avoidance for the IWB. The IWB can keep on detecting the environment with eleven ultrasonic sensors. The relative coordinates obtained by ultrasonic sensors are used to describe the position of obstacles. The APF is introduced to compute the repulsive speed and determine the next direction of motion for the IWB according to the relative coordinates. The proposed method can reduce the dependence of the IWB on environments, and thus, improve the ability to avoid obstacles in the unknown environment. We realized the proposed method using the IWB in the indoor environment. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective and efficient.