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Filling the Gap between Research and Market: Portable Architecture for an Intelligent Autonomous Wheelchair

Under the umbrella of assistive technologies research, a lot of different platforms have appeared since the 1980s, trying to improve the independence of people with severe mobility problems. Those works followed the same path coming from the field of robotics trying to reach users’ needs. Neverthele...

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Autores principales: García, Juan Carlos, Marrón-Romera, Marta, Melino, Alessandro, Losada-Gutiérrez, Cristina, Rodríguez, José Manuel, Fazakas, Albert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9858927/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36673988
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20021243
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author García, Juan Carlos
Marrón-Romera, Marta
Melino, Alessandro
Losada-Gutiérrez, Cristina
Rodríguez, José Manuel
Fazakas, Albert
author_facet García, Juan Carlos
Marrón-Romera, Marta
Melino, Alessandro
Losada-Gutiérrez, Cristina
Rodríguez, José Manuel
Fazakas, Albert
author_sort García, Juan Carlos
collection PubMed
description Under the umbrella of assistive technologies research, a lot of different platforms have appeared since the 1980s, trying to improve the independence of people with severe mobility problems. Those works followed the same path coming from the field of robotics trying to reach users’ needs. Nevertheless, those approaches rarely arrived on the market, due to their specificity and price. This paper presents a new prototype of an intelligent wheelchair (IW) that tries to fill the gap between research labs and market. In order to achieve such a goal, the proposed solution balances the criteria of performance and cost by using low-cost hardware and open software standards in mobile robots combined together within a modular architecture, which can be easily adapted to different profiles of a wide range of potential users. The basic building block consists of a mechanical chassis with two electric motors and a low-level electronic control system; driven by a joystick, this platform behaves similar to a standard electrical wheelchair. However, the underlying structure of the system includes several independent but connected nodes that form a distributed and scalable architecture that allows its adaptability, by adding new modules, to tackle autonomous navigation. The communication among the system nodes is based on the controller area network (CAN) specification, an extended standard in industrial fields that have a wide range of low-cost devices and tools. The system was tested and evaluated in indoor environments and by final users in order to ensure its usability, robustness, and reliability; it also demonstrated its functionality when navigating through buildings, corridors, and offices. The portability of the solution proposed is also shown by presenting the results on two different platforms: one for kids and another one for adults, based on different commercial mechanical platforms.
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spelling pubmed-98589272023-01-21 Filling the Gap between Research and Market: Portable Architecture for an Intelligent Autonomous Wheelchair García, Juan Carlos Marrón-Romera, Marta Melino, Alessandro Losada-Gutiérrez, Cristina Rodríguez, José Manuel Fazakas, Albert Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Under the umbrella of assistive technologies research, a lot of different platforms have appeared since the 1980s, trying to improve the independence of people with severe mobility problems. Those works followed the same path coming from the field of robotics trying to reach users’ needs. Nevertheless, those approaches rarely arrived on the market, due to their specificity and price. This paper presents a new prototype of an intelligent wheelchair (IW) that tries to fill the gap between research labs and market. In order to achieve such a goal, the proposed solution balances the criteria of performance and cost by using low-cost hardware and open software standards in mobile robots combined together within a modular architecture, which can be easily adapted to different profiles of a wide range of potential users. The basic building block consists of a mechanical chassis with two electric motors and a low-level electronic control system; driven by a joystick, this platform behaves similar to a standard electrical wheelchair. However, the underlying structure of the system includes several independent but connected nodes that form a distributed and scalable architecture that allows its adaptability, by adding new modules, to tackle autonomous navigation. The communication among the system nodes is based on the controller area network (CAN) specification, an extended standard in industrial fields that have a wide range of low-cost devices and tools. The system was tested and evaluated in indoor environments and by final users in order to ensure its usability, robustness, and reliability; it also demonstrated its functionality when navigating through buildings, corridors, and offices. The portability of the solution proposed is also shown by presenting the results on two different platforms: one for kids and another one for adults, based on different commercial mechanical platforms. MDPI 2023-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9858927/ /pubmed/36673988 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20021243 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
García, Juan Carlos
Marrón-Romera, Marta
Melino, Alessandro
Losada-Gutiérrez, Cristina
Rodríguez, José Manuel
Fazakas, Albert
Filling the Gap between Research and Market: Portable Architecture for an Intelligent Autonomous Wheelchair
title Filling the Gap between Research and Market: Portable Architecture for an Intelligent Autonomous Wheelchair
title_full Filling the Gap between Research and Market: Portable Architecture for an Intelligent Autonomous Wheelchair
title_fullStr Filling the Gap between Research and Market: Portable Architecture for an Intelligent Autonomous Wheelchair
title_full_unstemmed Filling the Gap between Research and Market: Portable Architecture for an Intelligent Autonomous Wheelchair
title_short Filling the Gap between Research and Market: Portable Architecture for an Intelligent Autonomous Wheelchair
title_sort filling the gap between research and market: portable architecture for an intelligent autonomous wheelchair
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9858927/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36673988
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20021243
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