Controlling a wheel chair according to the head movements of wheel chair user (Sheersha Yathra)

Sheersha Yathra is a project carried out by the department of computer science and engineering, University of Moratuwa Sri Lanka.

I'm proud to say that I was a member in this "Sheersha Yathra" Project Group.

Abstract

As a result of civil war which existed for three decades there are many soldiers who have been affected. So as engineering students we thought that it is our responsibility to utilize our knowledge and capabilities in a way that is beneficial to the country. The motivation behind this project is to support for such an officer who has not control below his neck.

At the moment he is staying at Mihindu Seth Madura. What we noticed was that he cannot do anything of his own. What he requested mainly was a way to move his wheel chair of his own.

So we came with up an idea to carry on a project which results in making a wheel chair which can be moved according to the head movements of the officer’s head.

Our Solution

To control the wheelchair according to the head movements of the user we have fixed a two dimensional tilt sensor in the user's head. According to the angle which the user's head is angled we will generate an analog signal and pass that analog signal to the main circuit board of the wheelchair. So the electric wheelchair main circuit board thinks that the signal is came from the joystick of the wheelchair. It will be a burden if the wheelchair is always controlled according to the head movements of the user. so user has given facility to activate and deactivate the head movement control of the wheelchair according to the voice commands of the user. We have use an arduino Mega board as the main control board of out project. We have connected a Voice recognition chip, R2R ladder to generate the analog signal. 

Here is a demo video of the Project