Development of a Control System and Interface Design Based on an Electric Wheelchair

Abstract

Recently, personal mobility has been researched and developed to make short-distance travel within the community more comfortable and convenient. However, from the viewpoint of personal mobility, there are problems such as difficulty in picking up items while shopping when operating the joystick for shopping and the inability to use hands freely. Accordingly, because the speed of personal mobility can be controlled by foot stepping like an accelerator pedal, we developed an electric wheelchair system that can control the speed by pedal operation. Furthermore, we developed a control system that considers the ride quality using an electric wheelchair with pedal control. In this study, the proposed method is detailed in three parts. Firstly, to develop the pedal mechanism, a potentiometer was used to detect the angle of the pedal mechanism, and a spring mechanism was designed for return to its original position after the pedal was pushed. Next, we propose a feedback control system that considers the ride quality of the operator. In addition, we integrated the system with a smart device-based robot system to realize the mobility as a service (MaaS). Finally, we present several examples of the system and discuss the applicability of the proposed system.