A Heuristic Approach to Overcome Architectural Barriers Using a Robotic Wheelchair

The Mobility Enhancement roBotic (MEBot) wheelchair was developed to improve the safety and accessibility of wheelchair users when facing architectural barriers. MEBot uses pneumatic actuators attached to its frame and six wheels to provide curb ascending/descending for heights up to 20.3 cm. To imp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on neural systems and rehabilitation engineering 2019-09, Vol.27 (9), p.1846-1854
Main Authors: Candiotti, Jorge L., Daveler, Brandon J., Kamaraj, Deepan C., Chung, Cheng S., Cooper, Rosemarie, Grindle, Garrett G., Cooper, Rory A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accessibility
Actuators
Adult
Aged
Algorithms
Architectural Accessibility
Completion time
Equipment Design
Female
gain scheduling
Heuristic methods
Heuristics
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Mobile robots
obstacle negotiation
Pneumatic actuators
rehabilitation robotics
Robotics - methods
Safety
Software
wheelchair
Wheelchairs
Wheels
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Summary:The Mobility Enhancement roBotic (MEBot) wheelchair was developed to improve the safety and accessibility of wheelchair users when facing architectural barriers. MEBot uses pneumatic actuators attached to its frame and six wheels to provide curb ascending/descending for heights up to 20.3 cm. To improve MEBot's application, this study used a heuristic approach with power wheelchair users to evaluate and improve the MEBot application at different curb heights. Wheelchair users were trained on MEBot's features to operate its curb ascending/descending application. Three trials were carried out with wheelchair users ascending and descending three curbs of different height. Quantitative variables were analyzed to improve the sequential steps to ascend/descend curbs. Additionally, the application's effectiveness and efficiency were measured by the number of completed tasks, change in seat angle, and task completion time. Results showed that participants completed each trial and applied alternative strategies to traverse different curb heights. Furthermore, results suggested the combination and/or re-arrangement of steps to reduce task completion time. MEBot demonstrated its effectiveness to ascend/descend different curb heights with a heterogeneous participant sample. Future work will incorporate participant's most efficient strategies to improve the ascending/ascending process and the efficiency of the MEBot application.
ISSN:1534-4320
1558-0210
DOI:10.1109/TNSRE.2019.2934387