Yaw motion control of power-assisted wheelchairs under lateral disturbance environment

Wheelchairs are important devices for people with leg disabilities. There are many kinds of wheelchairs being developed to minimize injury while improve ease of operation. Power-assisted wheelchairs were developed for the same reason. However, due to effects of gravity, power assist alone is not sufficient to make movement on slopes easy. Lateral disturbances make the wheelchair´s speed as well as direction unable to manage, which can cause accidents leading to injury. To overcome this problem, we propose yaw motion control of power-assisted wheelchairs. Using yaw motion control, a wheelchair would not be subjected to influence from lateral disturbance, and hence overall performance of the wheelchair would improve. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the yaw motion control, two kinds of experiments have been performed: going straight on the slope, and turning on the slope. Effectiveness of the proposed control system has been verified by experiments.