The Electric Wheelchair Controlled by Human Body Motion - Design of the prototype and basic experiment

This research develops a machine's interface which has features of universal design and offers an intuitive operation for complex tasks. We set the development of interface of electric wheelchair as a practical example, and proceed with this research. The joystick is the operation interface of general electric wheelchair. The user needs to operate it in accordance with machine's operational procedure specifications. Therefore the joystick is convenience operation system for the system side rather than the user side We focus on the body motions which humans have, and try to realize a new type of interface which replaces conventional joystick. The body motions is time-series data which contains ambiguousness, the common motions are extracted from this data and inputted to the electric wheelchair interface. Then the body motions are able to control the electric wheelchair. In particular this paper describes the design of the prototype and results of basic experiments.