The electric wheelchair controlled by human body motion interface: Classification of human body motion using Self-Organizing Map

This research studies the possibility of an intuitive interface for an electric wheelchair by using human body except hands. For this purpose, we focused on the human body motion which has relation to actions or behaviors. This motion comes from the human stabilization function for holding expectable collapsing caused by voluntary motion. Thus this motion is considered as one of the characteristics of human motions, and is linked to the intentions. Therefore, by applying this human body motion to the interface of an electric wheelchair, it is possible to operate the wheelchair without any complex motions or conscious motion. We call this interface as HBMI (Human Body Motion Interface). In this paper, We introduce the prototype by using HBMI, and show a classification of human body motion by using Self-Organizing Map (SOM).