Kinect based intelligent wheelchair navigation with potential fields

Increasing population of elderly and people with disabilities constitute a huge demand for wheelchairs. Wheelchairs have an important place to improve the lives of and mobilize people with disabilities. Also, autonomous wheelchairs constitute a suitable research platform for academic and industrial researchers. In this study, a finite state machine-based high-level controller and a Kinect-based navigation algorithm have been developed for the Intelligent Wheelchair (ATEKS) that has high-tech control mechanisms, low-cost sensor equipment, and open source software (ROS, GAZEBO). Designed finite state machine and algorithm are tested in Gazebo.