Designing An Eye-Controlled Electric Wheelchair

Introduction

The number of persons who are paralyzed and therefore dependent on others due to loss of self-mobility is growing with the population. The development of the wheelchair for paralyzed users is surprisingly recent starting with the conventional manually powered wheelchairs and advancing to electrical wheelchairs. Conventional wheelchair use tends to focus exclusively on manual use which use which assumes users still able to use their hands which excludes those unable to do so. Diseases or accidents injuring the nervous system also frequently because people lose their ability to move their voluntary muscle. Because voluntary muscle is the main actuator enabling people to move their body, paralysis may cause a person not move their locomotor organ such as arm, leg and others Paralysis may be local, global, or follow specific patterns. Most paralysis are constant, however there are other forms such as periodic paralysis (caused by genetic diseases), caused by various other factors. Scientist Stephen W. Hawking is perhaps the most well-known victim of major paralysis – Hawking was diagnosed with incurable Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in 1962, thereafter using a wheelchair to move. Many of those suffering close to or complete paralysis usually however still can control their eye movement which inspired us to develop an eye-controlled electric wheelchair.

This project delivers a method to guide and control the wheelchair for disabled people based on movement of eye and voice. This concept can be used for people with loco-motor disabilities. The proposed system involves three sections: Eye controlling section, voice reorganization unit and Obstacle detector. Wheelchairs are used by people for whom walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury, or disability. People who have difficulty sitting and walking often need to use a wheel bench. A basic manual wheelchair incorporates a seat, foot rests and four wheels: two, caster wheels at the front and two large wheels at the back. Other varieties of wheelchair are often variations on this basic design, but can be highly customised for the user's needs. Such customisations may encompass the seat dimensions, height, seat angle footrests, leg rests, front caster outriggers, adjustable backrests and controls. An electric-powered wheelchair is a wheelchair that is moved via the means of an electric motor and navigational controls, usually a small joystick mounted on the armrest, rather than manual power. For users who cannot manage a manual joystick, head switches.

Problem Definition

There are lots of people who are suffering from temporary or permanent disabilities due to illnesses or accident so in this case they can’t walk and they are completely depend on the other people. There are many people who use manually wheelchair but in manually chair we have to require some outsider to look after them in every condition which is frustrating for disable people. Every time they have to call for help for anything they want to do. After some time the helpers also get de motivate to help them.

Problem Solution

To overcome the problem of disable people which occurred in their daily life, we have proposed the wheelchair which is controlled by eyes movement and voice recognition. This wheelchair gives them a way to travel from one place to another according to their own wise. They don’t need any one to carry and push their wheel chair from one place to another. They can be independent as they can control their own wheel chair with sensors.

Litrature review

Kohei Arai and RonnyMardiyantoInternational Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 2, No. 12, 2011Eyes based electrical wheelchair control system. The anticipated Eyes based electrical wheelchair control system is controlled by human eyes only. Therefore disabled person can control the EBEWC by themselves. Most of the computer input system with human eyes only cogitate in specific circumstances and does not work in a real time basis. Likewise, it is not strong against several user races, illumination conditions, EWC vibration, and user's movement. Though experiments, it is found that the proposed EBEWC is robust against the aforementioned influencing factors. Moreover, it is confirmed that the proposed EBEWC can be controlled by human eyes only precisely and without harm.

The problem of the utmost significance of a planned EBEWC system is the asset against different user types, illumination changes, user's movement, vibration, and accuracy. In order to reflect these as vehicle system, if the user changes, the system should be works without any input parameter changes. In agreement with EWC movement, illumination condition may change. Also, troubles outstanding to EWC vibration is potentially problem. In the conventional EWC control system with human eyes only, camera is attached on EWC. This may cause a vulnerable when EWC is vibrated. Also, when user moves their head, gaze estimation is difficult. Furthermore, illumination state may change during EWC movement. The proposed EBEWC system consumes IR camera which mounted on user's glass. This way will reject problems of illumination changes, user's movement, and EWC vibration. Furthermore, the pupil detection based on pupil knowledge will improve the stoutness against different users. User can move during using the proposed EBEWC system in directions in the allowable distance of which the camera mounted on the glass acquires user face, It does not require any calibration process before using the proposed EBEWC system, It is robust against immunization changes, additive noises, vibrations to the EWC, user nationality (different colour of eye as well as skin, size, and shape of eye), eyelid influence, and shade and shadow, Pupil centre detection accuracy for the Acceptable angle range is almost 0. 2 degree, Even if pupil centre is not detected when user close eye, gaze location is estimated with the knowledge of previously detected pupil centre location.

The handicapped person has to depend on further person for each work. So to solve such problems, the design of advanced smart wheel chair based on embedded system have been wished-for which involve of campaigns such as AVR Atmega8, RF module, GSM Technology, Gesture Sensor, temperature sensor, heartbeat sensor. The anticipated design has three features: first is wheelchair motion control by gesture using accelerometer and RF module, second heart beat evidence direct to doctor by SMS and third is temperature information of handicap being by the same manner i. e. SMS, and we can also display patient heartbeat and temperature by sending SMS. In this paper a smart wheelchair has been designed for visually impaired people that controlled by phone. The motion of wheelchair is controlled through cellular phones. And this wheelchair afford protection against impediment and also provide movement. In this paper such a wheelchair is premeditated that controlled by patients or other user voice. This wheelchair very valuable to that persons which fully handicap and who can’t move wheelchair without other persons help.

In this paper such a wheelchair is deliberate which is activated by finger operation that based on image processing and embedded technology. In this paper such a wheelchair has been calculated that more helpful for handicap persons and senior civilian because it has multimode that are manual, speech and wave. From which user can use wheelchair allowing to himself. That built on ARM processor. In this paper an intellectual wheelchair has been designed. In which a special is devoted. From which help patient move wheelchair by pressing button and can also call to doctor mechanically by pressing button. When patient press button text display on LCD with sound. In this paper three new structures added that very different every day, the handicapped persons has to be contingent on another person for each work. So to crack such problems, the design of an advanced smart wheel chair based on embedded system have been proposed which consist of devices such as AVR Atmega8, RF module, GSM. The proposed design has three features: first is wheelchair motion control by RF module.

The paper by T. Jeshua terms the design of a voice controlled wheelchair using embedded system. Anticipated design supports voice activation system. AVR Microcontroller and voice recognition processors (HM2007) as well as touch screen is used for motion. For speech impaired and mentally disabled people, touch screen based and Brain Computer interface.

This strategy can be great for the quadriplegics who is permanently powerless to move any of the arms or legs (BCI) are used. Voice recognition kit (HM2007) that consists of 12 switches among which 4 switches are used for direction control and one switch to stop the wheelchair and a brake control switch is used to avoid collision. To realize the movement in all direction of the wheel chair, the microcontroller is coded with a wide range of digital values. The Brain Computer Interference (BCI) shows auspicious future in the designing of the wheelchair suitable for the people. The goal of using BCI is to create a specialized interface which will permit an distinct with sever motor disabilities to have effective control of devices such as wheel chairs, computers, robotic devices etc. The robotic wheelchair starts to move autonomously towards the destination as soon as the caregiver sets the goal position, e. g. , a dining room, by its touch panel interface. By using this system physically challenged people find it easy to move within the house using wheelchair without any external help.

By Eye Control: This is a method to director and governor the wheelchair for disabled persons based on movement of eye. The recommended method consist of image processing.

By Voice control: a dependent-user recognition voice system has been strategic in this wheel chair. The proposed signal involved three segment eyes controlling section, voice recognition unit and obstacle detector. The speech recognizer changes basically on HM2007 processor which is the heart of the speech recognizer. Speech recognition is shared into two broad processing classes; speaker dependent and speaker independent. The user’s eye movement systems the basis of the entire system. The movement of the eyeballs is nonstop tracked using a wireless camera. The transmitting Arduino then transmits the information wirelessly to the receiving Arduino which is fixed on the wheelchair. The receiving Arduino on the wheelchair is coupled to the motor driver. On unloading appropriated command, the receiving Arduino directs the motion in the required direction.

Advantages

• Minimal effort to mobilize: minimum effort is needed to control the wheelchair because you can use a simple voice recognition and eye movement.
• Independence: with a smart wheel chair you don’t have to depend on someone else to push the chair allowing you to the independence moving chair.
• Smart wheel chair are easily transportable if there are option of the folded.
• Disadvantage
• Maintenance and Repair: the cost of the maintaining and repairing of smart wheel chair can be higher than the manual wheel chair.
• Size: smart wheel chair is larger than the manual may not be suitable in every home.

Conclusion

In this project we developed a wheelchair controlled by the movement of eyes and Voice recognition for disable person with a microcontroller to which sensor are connected. This project enables the disable people to move their wheelchair in their own direction without help of any person. This will make their life freely and independently.

Future Work

In near future we will see the higher function of wheelchair, brain computer interfaces with more control, voice and camera gesture being used more in the future. We should start seeing growth in wearable interfaces. Robots and the way we interact with them is already beginning to change.