New sonar configuration for a powered wheelchair

Abstract

The paper presents the architecture adopted for an ultrasonic system mounted on a powered wheelchair, from both an electronic and mechanical perspective. It also includes the measurement and basic processing strategy used for the ultrasonic echoes received. The system's most outstanding characteristics are: low cost, easy installation on any standard wheelchair (taking up little space), total modularity, standard communications via a Lonworks bus, absolute transducer configurability (to emit or receive at any instant), extremely reduced environment scanning time and real time data processing using a DSP card.