Shared Control of an Electric Wheelchair Considering Physical Functions and Driving Motivation

Lele Xi and Motoki Shino
Additional contact information
Lele Xi: Department of Human and Engineered Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo (UT), Chiba 277-8561, Japan
Motoki Shino: Department of Human and Engineered Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo (UT), Chiba 277-8561, Japan

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 15, 1-19

Abstract: Individuals with severe physical impairments have difficulties operating electric wheelchairs (EWs), especially in situations where fine steering abilities are required. Automatic driving partly solves the problem, although excessive reliance on automatic driving is not conducive to maintaining their residual physical functions and may cause more serious diseases in the future. The objective of this study was to develop a shared control system that can be adapted to different environments by completely utilizing the operating ability of the user while maintaining the motivation of the user to drive. The operating characteristics of individuals with severe physical impairments were first analyzed to understand their difficulties when operating EWs. Subsequently, a novel reinforcement learning-based shared control method was proposed to adjust the control weight between the user and the machine to meet the requirements of fully exploiting the operating abilities of the users while assisting them when necessary. Experimental results showed that the proposed shared control system gradually adjusted the control weights between the user and the machine, providing safe operation of the EW while ensuring full use of the control signals from the user. It was also found that the shared control results were deeply affected by the types of users.

Keywords: electric wheelchair; physical impairments; shared control; driving motivation; reinforcement learning; user-machine interaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5502/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5502/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:15:p:5502-:d:391938

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().