ROBOTIC WHEELCHAIR CONTROL CONSIDERING USER COMFORT - Modeling and Experimental Evaluation

Abstract

This paper analyzes the comfort of wheelchair users when a sliding-mode trajectory-tracking controller is used. The transmission of the horizontal (fore-and-aft) vibration to the head-neck complex (HNC) in the seated human body may cause unacceptable discomfort and motion sickness. A double-inverted pendulum model with two degrees of freedom is considered as a model for the HNC. The user comfort is examined not only in the time domain (using the fourth power vibration dose value), but also in the frequency domain (using the cross-spectral density method). For measuring the acceleration of the wheelchair, along the trajectory, an inertial measurement unit was used.