IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AUTONOMOUS WHEELCHAIR: MECHATRONIC DESIGN AND SLAM NAVIGATION (original) (raw)

This paper presents an autonomous robotic wheelchair navigation system (ARWNS). The proposed ARWNS provides the functions of indoor map construction, wheelchair localization, path planning, obstacle avoidance navigation. A front LiDar was utilized in this paper to create the indoor map, to localize the wheelchair itself, as well as to identify the front obstacles. Hector simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) open source codes of the Robot Operating System (ROS) were applied in this paper to realize a LiDar-based map construction and localization system. The rapidly-exploring random tree (RRT) approach was further applied in terms of the SLAM-based map information to dynamically plan a feasible path to reach the destination. Furthermore, the autonomous navigation system was proposed by utilizing artificial potential field (APF) approach so that the robotic wheelchair is capable of following the planned path to reach the destination without any collision with obstacle. Finally, a lab-made robotic wheelchair controller was implemented based on the aforementioned approaches for experimental validation in terms of different obstacle arrangements.