Head operated electric wheelchair

Currently, the most common way to control an electric wheelchair is to use joystick. However, there are some individuals unable to operate joystick-driven electric wheelchairs due to sever physical disabilities, like quadriplegia patients. This paper proposes a novel head pose estimation method to assist such patients. Head motion parameters are employed to control and drive an electric wheelchair. We introduce a direct method for estimating user head motion, based on a sequence of range images captured by Kinect. In this work, we derive new version of the optical flow constraint equation for range images. We show how the new equation can be used to estimate head motion directly. Experimental results reveal that the proposed system works with high accuracy in real-time. We also show simulation results for navigating the electric wheelchair by recovering user head motion.