Design and Development of a Smart Wheelchair for the Disabled People

Abstract

About 15% of the world population is currently suffering from one or some form of disability. Among the various cases of disability, incompetence of mobility is the most common drawback, which significantly affects the ordinary life of the patient. The traditional approach is to bind the patient to a conventional wheelchair. However, it fails to provide the user with a taste of freedom as the user will require continuous assistance from others. Although the user can manually propel the system, it will take quite some physical effort. A smart wheelchair with different driving modes can significantly reduce effort. In this research, we designed a smart-wheelchair contains two types of drive system like the thumb and gesture control system. The design of the User Interface (UI) is such that, the user to easily navigate across the menu and choose the preferred control system. A heart rate sensor is incorporated to compute the medical conditions of the patient. In case of any emergency, the build-in response system will be activated and provide a notification to the concerned person.