Wheel Chair Controlling Without Hand

According to a research there are about 6 million populations in the world who are paralysed and needs a wheelchair for their mobility. Earlier the wheel chairs had to be moved and be externally supported by any person. To help overcome this “joystick-controlled wheelchairs” are developed. But in regular use, these joystick-controlled wheelchairs became difficult to use. Especially in the case of paralysed people, the use of joystick became more difficult due to the hard buttons and unidirectional use of the joysticks. To overcome these problems, we’ve tried to develop a “gesture-controlled wheelchair” which can be moved with a slight tilt of the hand. This can be used in both hands and can be controlled to come to the user from a distance.

             An accelerometer is used as a sensor which gives an analog signal on its movement in any of the 6 axis directions,  that is positive X axis, negative X axis, positive Y axis, negative Y axis, positive Z axis, negative Z axis. In this project we have considered X and Y axis for the direction. Further the input from sensor is given to encoder which sends the data wirelessly through the transmitter, then the data is received at the receiver end and the sensor data is decoded and finally given to microcontroller. Based on data received the from accelerometer the microcontroller sends the signal accordingly to relays to move the wheelchair in forward, backward, left, right directions. The accelerometer used here is MEMS (micro-electromechanical system).

Keywords: Arduino uno, Ultrasonic sensor, MEMS sensor, Motor driver, DC motor, power supply