Gesture Controlled Wheel chair

Published on 20 May 2022. Written by Athulya Menon

The health service industry is growing for a while now, thanks to the advancements in science and technology. As more scientific breakthroughs happen, the medical sector benefits from this, and as a result, the standard of living rises.

The disabled have a hard time doing normal things. Hence, as aspiring engineers, we must use the knowledge we have to make things easier for them. This time around, we will be focusing on a mechatronics project, that will make the lives of the disabled a whole lot easier.

Project Description

Mobility assistance is a field of health sciences that is gaining a lot of momentum around the world. As a result, around the world, there has been a rise in the number of developers who are working towards bettering the robotic wheelchairs. In this project, you will build one such robotic wheelchair which uses a combination of motors and sensors to navigate, detect obstacles and evade them. This smart wheelchair will move automatically by employing sensors and artificial intelligence efficiently. By using this wheelchair, quadriplegic patients will be able to move around without the help of an aid, and by only relying on their head gestures.

Project Implementation

The gears and Alto flywheels are attached to the inside rim of the wheelchair.
Bendix couplings are fixed to the Stepper motor shaft to transmit power.
Then the manual wheelchair is converted into an electric wheelchair with an appropriate gear ratio for transmitting torque and power.
The wheels have the motor attached to them, and that is how they move.
They will be able to reach a maximum speed of 3.6 KmpH.
The data from accelerometer and gyroscope sensors are run through a processing algorithm in Raspberry Pi.
As per the result, the output triggers the JQC-3FF relay to get the DC motor running accordingly.
The front, back, left and right-side motion of the head triggers the relay system and help in moving the wheelchair.
An MSP-430 microcontroller may also be used to process the head motion and translate into code which enables the movement of the wheelchair.
The ultrasonic sensors must be attached to the legs of the chair, and help in obstacle detection.
Separate code must be written for these sensors to obtain information about the environment and evade obstacles.
The data from the accelerometer and gyroscope must be combined and filtered by the processing algorithm to enable proper wheelchair movement.
A unique threshold may be created for each user as per their convenience. This threshold will determine their wheelchairs motion as a function of their head gesture.
Use the I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit) protocol to interface the MPU6050 sensor using a Raspberry Pi.
Connect the sensor using the SDA (data line) and SCL (clock line).
Use the general-purpose input/output GPIO pins to connect the relay to the Raspberry Pi.
The head orientation falls into three data categories; Pitch angle (X-axis), Roll angle (Y-axis) and the Yaw angle(Z-axis). The algorithm uses the x, y and z-axis values to move the chair.
The pitch angle gives information regarding forward and backward motion.
Roll angle relays information regarding left and right motion, and the Yaw angle controls the back left and back right movement data.
Using these sets of values, a simple code can be written, and the wheelchair is good to go.

Concepts Used

Mechanical Design
Circuit Design
Raspberry Pi programming
Sensor Technology
Programming and Algorithm making
Object Detection Algorithms
Motor basics

Kit required to develop Gesture Controlled Wheel chair:

Technologies you will learn by working on Gesture Controlled Wheel chair:

Gesture Controlled Wheel chair

Any Questions?

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