A New Approach to a Power Wheel Chair for Children

1. Battery Left Motor A New Approach to a Power Wheel Chair for Children Yiyuan Jia, Spencer Bennett, Matthew Payne & Dr. BahaJassemnejadDepartment of Engineering and Physics, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK 73034 Joy Stick Motor Controller Right Motor Overview Overview Continued Abstract Future Work Power wheelchair is a feasible alternative to small children with developmental and motor disabilities, such as Cerebral Palsy and Spinal Muscular Atrophy. A power wheelchair provides the disabled child an opportunity and means to mobility and interaction, therefore improving the development in other areas that would be indirectly affected by the disability.1However, up until now, infants under 24 months of age were not considered candidates for training in power mobility,2 and it is sometimes not easy for a child to precisely control the wheelchair at certain situations which may cause potential safety hazard. To solve these problems, in this project our team is aiming to design and build a parent assistance controlled wheelchair system that can be operated by a parent who wants to real-time monitor his/her child’s situation and even help the child to control the wheelchair. Besides, in order to make the parent control process easily and precisely, we want use a smart phone as our controller and monitor. In order to achieve these goals, the cloud computing technology will be applied in the system, obstacle detection function will be build in the wheelchair. hand in hand with the remote control system. The monitor system for the chair will consist of a camera located of the front of the chair,  which will be pointed directly forward. By using commercial monitoring software, it will be possible to access the streaming video on an iPhone or other smartphone or  computer. This will allow the parent to see where the child is going.   Control System The control system is consist of a Basic Stamp 2sx microcontroller, sonar sensor system, a joystick and a motor controller. Control signal will be processed by the microcontroller, the signal from computer will be programmed and execute, combining the feedback signal from the sensor system and then connect to the joystick in order to control the wheelchair. Note that in this project the joystick is not supposed to be functioning as a controller by the child, however, in the next step of control system design, we will make two control modes that can be switched between parents control and child control which will be build in our mobile app and can be operate by the parents. Mobile App Programing in this semester, we will be running a web server as our “cloud” on the computer for the iPhone to be able to communicate with the system. Our next goal is to rent a cloud sever to store and process both the controlling and monitoring information. we are also going to develop our own mobile apps run oneither a ios or Android platform. Simulation We would like to simulate the control system using Labview and Matlabto make sure its stability. Human- Machine Interface Technologies Some other novel Human-Machine Interface Technologies may be adopted in our system, such as voice control, eye-tracking and pressure sensing. Figure 2ASchemiatic of the Proposed Prototype System Cloud Computing & Communication In order to control our device from a large distance away without having the major components of the processing being physically mounted to one end or the other, we will employ the use of cloud computing in order to alleviate both sides of the extra hardware. Having essentially all of the computing handled this way will mean that ease of access for both involved parties will be maximized. (i.e.: the person sitting in the chair and the person remotely controlling it). It is our goal to successfully create a control system that will allow the normal functions of the chair whenever the driver is in good condition to operate the vehicle, and then to allow the controls to be overridden in the case where the driver of the chair is, for whatever reason, unable to control the chair. The implementation of this new technology will require an extensive knowledge of the programming and execution of mobile application programming. Using the Java programming language we will develop a remote control app that couldbe downloaded onto a mobile device such as an iPhone or Android and can be used anywhere the user has access to Wi-Fi and/or 3G for compatible devices. Monitor System As is warranted by the above explanation, one must be able to the environment of the chair in order to control it effectively from long range. For this reason, we have implemented also the use of a remote monitoring system, which will traffic data in the same fashion as the remote control, however the monitoring system will require significantly less rigorous programming and will work References [1] Power Mobility and Socialization in Preschool: A Case Study of a Child With Cerebral Palsy [2]Babies driving robots: self-generated mobility in very young infants [3] Introduction to Mechatronics and Measurement Systems 4th Edition by David G. Alciatoreet. [4] Design and Development of Fuzzy Logic Operated Microcontroller Based Smart Motorized Wheelchair by Hamid Reza Moslehi. [5] A Description of the SENA Robotic Wheelchair by Gonzalez J et. [6] Shared User-Computer Control of a Robotic Wheelchair System by Holly A. Yanco. [7] Hum-Power Controller for Powered Wheelchairs by HosseinGhaffariNik Prototype Background Figure 1 A Schematic of Commercial Power Wheelchair In an unmodified commercial electric power wheelchair a joystick or any user interface system (switches, touchscreen displays, etc.) is linked to the wheelchair main controller (which acts as a motor controller) and the controller is connected to the two motors. Batteries are also connected to the controller, providing the necessary power for the system. The user selects the desired speed and direction using the joystick and the controller drives the motors based on the signal received by the joystick. Contact Information Figure 3 Quickie ZippieP500 Power Wheelchair We adopt a Quickie DisignZippie P500 Power Wheelchair as our base. A Basic Stamp 2SX is embedded in the system which can be programed and make an order to the motor controller. A sonar sensor will also be build on the wheelchair which will provide the obstacle detection function.