Development of remote controllable visiting robot considering local situation

Abstract

Recently, various wheelchair robots are developed for improvement of usability of wheelchair. There are some types in users of wheelchair. We focused on users of wheelchair who live in the area far from their family or care giver. Because of depopulation and aging in rural area, it is expected that the number of such users of wheelchair increases. It is please them to go out and talk with their family or care giver. However, the family or the care giver can't easily to go to see him or her because it takes a lot of time and cost to go. And then we decided to develop a remote controllable wheelchair robot with the function of telepresence. On the other hand, the remote control is too risky for a local user of wheelchair robot. A wheelchair robot must be driven safely by a remote user. The purpose of this study is to improve safety of driving of the wheelchair robot by a remote user. We supposed that it is able to relieve the fear of local user and a remote user by improving a function of emergency stop. We conducted experiment to survey the size of comfortable space of a user on wheelchair robot.