Paper:
The Evaluation of Agreement Between Dynamics of Electric Wheelchair and Human Behavior
Shigenobu Shimada*, Kosei Ishimura**, and Mitsuo Wada**
*Division of Systems and Information Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University
**Division of Synergetic Information Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, N14-W9, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-0814, Japan
We studied the problem of interaction of movement between the electric wheelchair and the user. Almost all current products have indexes such as roll stability and operability, but such indexes do not always agree with user behavior because such indexes are static. Another problem arises from the fact that the disagreement of movement causes uncontrollable situations and turnover of the wheelchairs. We evaluated wheelchairs that consider user behavior, first in an experiment to understand the cause of disagreement among users during movement by measuring straight line ands turning, then, based on this result, derived a mathematical model for disagreement in wheelchair motion. Computer simulation, showed that vibration occurred within certain parameters. We present simple roll stability analysis of wheelchairs turning. Simulation confirmed the viability of our proposals.
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