Spherical vision cameras in a semi-autonomous wheelchair system

This paper is concerned with the methods developed for extending the capabilities of a spherical vision camera system to allow detection of surrounding objects and whether or not they pose a danger for movement in that direction during autonomous navigation of a power wheelchair. A Point Grey Research (PGR) Ladybug2 spherical vision camera system was attached to the power wheelchair for surrounding vision. The objective is to use this Ladybug2 system to provide information about obstacles all around the wheelchair and aid the automated decision-making process involved during navigation. Through instantaneous neural network classification of individual camera images to determine whether obstacles are present, detection of obstacles have been successfully achieved with accuracies reaching 96%. This assistive technology has the purpose of automated obstacle detection, navigational path planning and decision-making, and collision avoidance during navigation.