Smooth Path Planning for Intelligent Wheelchair Based on Human-Machine Interaction

Path planning is a complicated and challenge problem in mobile robotics if a mobile robot is expected operated in the real world. Human-machine interaction (HMI) could play an important role in this process and the robot can get help from the user during path planning. In this paper, we introduce a smooth path planning method for an intelligent wheelchair (IW) based on HMI. The user first presents some key points on a known environment map to the system via HCI. Then these key points are used by IW as path skeleton points for generating a smooth collision-free path. Under the cooperation of the user and IW, smooth path planning becomes easy and convenient. Simulation results show that the proposed method works well and very convenient for the user