Persons with mobility impairments have a lower quality of life, being affected at physical, psychological, social and financial level. More than a half of wheelchair users have difficulty going outside their homes, and this is reflected on their employment rate - only seventeen percent are employed. More than half of power wheelchair users reported difficulty in learning how to maneuver a traditional power wheelchair. The progress registered in mobile robotics allowed the creation of smart wheelchairs, which opens the opportunity for new ways to develop user interfaces and even to add navigation aids – thus approaching the difficulties in learning how to maneuver the wheelchair. An intuitive way to give commands is using the eye gaze. This paper presents a smart user interface, based on eye gaze tracking, called Display/Eye Tracker device Set (DETS). DETS is a highly customizable user interface in relation to the specific, particular needs for each wheelchair user. DETS is also a command input for a semi-autonomous navigation system, based on VHF+ algorithm, in which the wheelchair user is able to select a destination in a local mapped space; the wheelchair control system will then move towards the selected destination in autonomous mode.

This paper is a component of a research project regarding the design and development of an Intelligent Haptic Robot-Glove for the rehabilitation of the patients that have a diagnosis of a cerebrovascular accident. In this paper, the control system for a rehabilitation hand exoskeleton is discussed. In order to avoid the complex problems given by a distributed sensor network, this paper treats the problem of the compliance force control by using observers: a velocity observer, a force observer and a disturbance observer. Two control solutions are discussed. First, the disturbance effects are eliminated by a cascade closed loop control with velocity and force observers. Then, a disturbance observer is used to compensate the compliance effects. The performance of the control systems is demonstrated by the simulation.

The paper aims to study the applicability and limitations of the solution resulting from a design process for an intelligent system supporting people with special needs who are not physically able to control a wheelchair using classical systems. The intelligent system uses information from smart sensors and offers a control system that replaces the use of a joystick. The necessary movements of the chair in the environment can be determined by an intelligent vision system analyzing the direction of the patient’s gaze and point of view, as well as the actions of the head. In this approach, an important task is to detect the destination target in the 3D workspace. This solution has been evaluated, outdoor and indoor, under different lighting conditions. In order to design the intelligent wheelchair, and because sometimes people with special needs also have specific problems with their optical system (e.g., strabismus, Nystagmus) the system was tested on different subjects, some of them wearing eyeglasses. During the design process of the intelligent system, all the tests involving human subjects were performed in accordance with specific rules of medical security and ethics. In this sense, the process was supervised by a company specialized in health activities that involve people with special needs. The main results and findings are as follows: validation of the proposed solution for all indoor lightning conditions; methodology to create personal profiles, used to improve the HMI efficiency and to adapt it to each subject needs; a primary evaluation and validation for the use of personal profiles in real life, indoor conditions. The conclusion is that the proposed solution can be used for persons who are not physically able to control a wheelchair using classical systems, having with minor vision deficiencies or major vision impairment affecting one of the eyes.

As the EU population is getting older, the number of Europeans with disabilities is rising significantly. Among them, a consistent percentage is represented by persons with severe mobility impairment, making them dependent of wheelchairs. This paper proposes a human - wheelchair command interface based on head movement tracking. The head movements are tracked using an artificial vision-based system. The wheelchair user can select between two control modes - in a first control mode, simple commands (as left, right, forward, stop) are given; in the second control mode, the wheelchair movements are correlated with both amplitude and speed of head movement. For the both control modes, the wheelchair movement commands are assisted by a 3D cartography analysis system, having the role to prevent the collision with near-by obstacles.

For people with amputated lower limbs, it is imperative to make high-performance prostheses that reproduce, as accurately as possible, the functions of the amputated limb. In this case, a preliminary study of the lower limbs from a kinematic and dynamic point of view is necessary. This paper proposes a prosthesis design and a system for acquiring the information needed to determine the stepping phase kinematic and dynamic parameters of the legs. This system consists of a sensory system attached to the legs and a acquisition data unit built around a microcontroller. The sensory system is based on a sensory system for determining the weight distribution on the sole, made of resistive pressure sensors. The sensory system will be subjected to measurement repeatability and homogeneity tests to evaluate and validate the accuracy and error of the proposed solution. The data obtained by the sensory system is transmitted in real-time, via wi-fi, to a computer system for interpretation. After processing and interpreting the data using standard data sets for comparison, the position of the legs, the type of gait and the phase of movement can be determined. Constructively, the system is configurable and can be adapted to any person, male or female, regardless of shoe size.

In this paper, we propose an autonomous and real-time navigation module that drives a smart electric wheelchair (SEW) to the desired target, along with its ability to avoid obstacles in a dynamic 3D environment. To avoid obstacles, we use a remote sensing technology (Lidar) to provide real-time mapping of the environment. The generated map is fed to the virtual obstacle avoidance control algorithm. To control the SEW to the target, we use an algorithm based on the artificial potential field (APF) method to generate the desired trajectory and simultaneously guarantee its efficiency and continuity. Our algorithm is specially adapted and based on the idea of virtual forces, the one of attraction generated by reaching the desired target and the one of rejection caused by the detected obstacles. The SEW behaviour is obtained by the sum of the force of attraction and all the repulsion forces at a given position. The simulation results in a corridor with obstacles that confirm the viability of the proposed APF algorithm. It can be used effectively to plan the trajectory of intelligent wheelchairs and can be applied in real-time scenarios.