A Study on Electric Wheelchair Aiming at Assistance of the Caretaker

In today's aging society, the number of wheelchair users has been increasing. Therefore, we need to consider the possibility that both a wheelchair user and his/her caretaker are senior citizens who don't have enough strength to operate heavy apparatus. So, some makers have developed different types of wheelchairs, but all of them have several buttons that caretakers have to operate in order to choose the degree of electric assistance they need. Then, we propose a more user-friendly control system for a wheelchair that is equipped with a force sensor and a microcomputer. In this paper, the details of the system and mechanism of the grips of the improved wheelchair are explained. Simulation results of our data show the effectiveness of the proposed control system for a wheelchair.