Robotic Wheelchair Moving with the Caregiver

This paper presents a robotic wheelchair that moves with a caregiver. Moving with the caregiver does not only mean following the caregiver. When the caregiver moves forward to push a button to call the elevator or to open the door, the wheelchair waits until the elevator comes or the door is opened. Such actions can be done without any caregiver´s intentional commands by setting `non-reactive area´ around the wheelchair. We conducted some actual experiments which showed the usefulness of the wheelchair