2014 IEEE Students’ Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science

A Novel Multipurpose Smart Wheelchair

Deepesh K Rathore Pulkit Srivastava Sankalp Pandey Sudhanshu Jaiswal
Department of Electronics and Department of Electronics and Department of Electronics and Department of Electronics and
Communication, Communication, Communication, Communication,
National Institute of National Institute of National Institute of National Institute of
Technology, Bhopal Technology, Bhopal Technology, Bhopal Technology, Bhopal
deepeshrathore0734@gmail.com pulkitsrivastavajd@gmail.com sankalp.pandey92@gmail.com sudhanshujaiswal92@gmail.com

Abstract— In this paper we propose an intelligent wheelchair
which can assist physically handicapped, visually impaired as
well as elderly people. Elderly and physically challenged people
often find themselves unable to do their daily routine work
without other’s help. In today’s fast world where people don’t
have enough time for others, elderly and physically challenged
people need to be independent. Our wheelchair is developed with
a view to serve the purpose. It consists of a navigation system
which makes use of accelerometer and magnetometer, the system
contains a navigation pad which can be held in hand or tied to
the head for navigating the chair. It also has obstacle avoidance
system comprising of four ultrasonic sensors, real time location
tracking system which makes use of RFID for tracking the chair
inside a building and voice guidance system to assist the visually
impaired. Thus, it is a multipurpose intelligent wheelchair which
is cost-effective and can assist people in their daily work.
Keywords— Wheelchair, accelerometer, RFID,
tracking, voice guidance, obstacle avoidance.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wheelchair is one of the most commonly used assistive
devices for enhancing the personal mobility of people with
disabilities. According to the World Health Organization an
estimated 1% of the world's population or just over 65 million
people need a wheelchair. Over 6.1 million people in India
have movement related disability.
For physically challenged and elderly people independent
mobility is vital. They often require some assistance to
perform their daily routine [1]. A means that can provide them
independent locomotion may help in making them self-
sufficient. A wheelchair is one such means; it serves as an aid
to such people and helps them perform their daily work
without other’s assistance. In today’s fast world people don’t
have much time for others thus, physically challenged and
elder people need to be self-sufficient in performing their
work. Our multipurpose wheelchair is designed in a way that it
can help elderly, physically challenged and visually impaired
persons also.
A lot of work has been done in this area,
L.Srinivasavaradhan et al. [2] propose a system which can be
applied to vehicles and can also be extended to wheelchairs.
The system detects obstacle/ nearby vehicle, control the speed,
This project was sponsored by IEEE student’s chapter M.A.N.I.T. to
which the authors are thankful.
traffic light detection and signboard detection etc. S.
Manogna et al. [3] propose a system for wheelchair which
carries navigational functions with the help of accelerometer
tied to the head of the user. It lacks obstacle detection system.
Yoshio Matsumoto et al. [4] propose a gaze and head
movement based interface for wheelchair. In order to move
the chair user has to look where he wants to go and nod or
shake his head to start or stop the chair. However, it uses
desktop pc attached to the back of chair for processing which
makes system very bulky and cost intensive. The system is not
of much use to a blind person and lacks any obstacle detection
capabilities. E.D.Coyle [5] propose electronic wheelchair
controller which uses ultrasonic non-contact head control
system and speech recognition system in order to provide
location navigation functions. The system requires training of the
speech recognition module.
Yoshinori Kuno et al. [6] propose a wheelchair whose
motion can be controlled by the user’s face direction. He can
drive it only by looking in the direction where he wants to go.
It also uses ultrasonic sensors to avoid obstacles and for wall
following. The system is a good implementation but is bulkier
and performance depends largely on background environment,
lighting conditions etc. Papers [7] and [8] also discuss some
innovative techniques based on speech recognition and vision
for wheelchair navigation.
Our system is multipurpose as it can be used by physically
challenged, visually impaired, Quadriplegia affected persons
and elder persons. The control system which we designed can
be attached to any power wheelchair without many
modifications.
We have also provided the voice guidance facility to guide
the visually impaired persons. This subsystem makes the use
of a commonly available cheap MP3 player which is
interfaced to a microcontroller. Pre- recorded audio clips are
saved in the MP3 player. According to the requirement, the
algorithm in the microcontroller plays required clip thus,
providing necessary assistance to the user when needed. Thus,
we eliminated the requirement of using DSP system which
was more complex and cost intensive.
The rest of the paper is arranged as follows: section II
describes the system in detail, section III discusses working of

978-1-4799-2526-1/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE

the system, section IV deals with the hardware and software The magnetometer is used for direction indication purposes.
used, section V concludes the paper and section VI discusses It is of great help for the visually impaired persons.
the future works. Geographical north direction is derived from the readings of
magnetometer. A vibration pad is attached to the chair. It
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION consists of four vibration motors and a push button, on pressing
The control system of the proposed wheelchair can be the button motor lying in the north gets activated and vibrates
divided into various subsystems: thereby indicating north direction to the user.

• Navigation subsystem. Thus user can easily follow the directions and instructions
given in the audio clip played by the voice guidance system
• Location monitoring subsystem. without any ambiguity.
• Voice guidance subsystem.
• Obstacle detection subsystem.

Fig. 2. Vibration pad for direction indication

B. Location monitoring subsystem

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the system.
This subsystem deals with monitoring of the location of
wheelchair in a building. The subsystem is built using active
RFID technology. Active RFID tags are placed in the building
at locations where voice assistance is vital such as near stairs,
doorways or at junctions where different paths lead to different
places. RFID receiver is attached to the wheelchair, when the
receiver comes in the range of a tag; it gets the unique ID of the
tag which is passed on to the microcontroller.

A. Navigation subsystem Microcontroller compares the ID with a list of pre-stored

This subsystem deals with the navigation of the wheelchair.
It is used by the user to move the wheelchair in any desired
direction. The subsystem mainly comprises of accelerometer
and magnetometer modules.
The subsystem consists of a small navigation pad which
can be either tied to wrist or to head. On tilting the pad in the
desired direction of motion, the chair moves accordingly. The
readings of x and y-axis are taken from the accelerometer and
are compared against upper and lower limit, if they lie within
the threshold, action is performed. This process also prevents
motion of the chair due to abrupt high readings obtained from
the accelerometer due to its accidental jerking. The table below
shows the upper and lower threshold for the readings used in
the prototype.
IDs stored in it and on finding a match it generates control
signals for the MP3 player.
C. Voice guidance subsystem
Voice guidance system is meant for guiding visually
impaired persons. It consists of an MP3 player which is
interfaced to the microcontroller. MP3 player has preloaded
audio clips. While moving in a building when the wheelchair
encounters an RFID tag, its unique ID number is received by
microcontroller and it then sends signals to MP3 player to play
a particular audio clip which gives the information about the
surrounding environment at that place. User listens to the clip
through headphones and can easily know where he is and the
possible places where he can go.

TABLE I. ACCELEROMETER READINGS

X-axis Y-axis Direction of motion

X>635 711>Y>-711 Forward

X<-635 711>Y>-711 Backwards

635>X>-635 Y>711 Left turn Fig. 3. MP3 player interfaced with microcontroller
635>X>-635 Y<-711 Right turn

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D. Obstacle detection subsystem
This subsystem is responsible for the detection of obstacles.
It consists of ultrasonic sensors; these sensors emit sound
waves whose frequency is well above the perceivable
frequency range of the human ears. These sounds waves when
strike an object, gets reflected and are received by the sensor.
Thus, by calculating the total time for the waves to return back,
distance can be derived. It is given by the relation:
Distance (in cm) = (Travel time * 10-6 * 34300) / 2
In our prototype a limit of 40 cm was set. If any obstacle comes
closer than this limit, a buzzer activates and user is warned.
However, if obstacle comes closer than 30 cm, chair’s
movement in that direction is stopped.
Fig. 4. Prototype of our wheelchair.
III. WORKING
The figure below shows the working of the wheelchair:
Fig. 5. Working of the wheelchair
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IV. TECHNOLOGY
A. Hardware used
1. Accelerometer & Magnetometer
The accelerometer is a Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems
(MEMS) device that can measure the force of acceleration,
whether caused by gravity or by movement. Magnetometers
are used to measure the strength and, in some cases, the
direction of the magnetic field at a point in space.
We used LSM303DLHC module which is a digital 3 axis
accelerometer and 3 axis magnetometer which communicates
through I2C protocol [9]. It has full-scale acceleration range of
±2g to ±16g and full scale magnetic field range of ±1.3 to ±8.1
gauss.
2. Ultra sonic range finder
Ultrasonic sensors work on a principle similar to radar or
sonar. They generate high frequency sound waves and
evaluate the echo which is received back by the sensor.
Sensors calculate the time interval between sending the signal
and receiving the echo to determine the distance to an object.
We used HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensors, they work on 40
kHz frequency and can measure distance from 2 cm to 350 cm
with 3mm accuracy.
3. Active RFID
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the wireless non-
contact use of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to
transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying and
tracking tags attached to objects. Active RFID tags are battery
operated and have relatively long range. Our RFID system
worked on 433 MHz and the range was about 4-5 m.
B. Software used
1. Code Vision Avr
We used Code Vision Avr to program the microcontroller.
V. CONCLUSION
The proposed system is aimed towards the welfare of not
only physically challenged but also visually impaired and
elderly people. The system has proven to be of simple
implementation and cost effective. The results obtained clearly
imply that the system is easy to handle by the patients. The
system is equipped with accelerometer for the movement of the
chair and ultrasonic sensors for obstacle detection. Voice
guidance system of the chair guides the user through the way at
each and every instant. Thus, proposed system is a realistic,
efficient and a good way to assist the daily needs of the person
in need.
VI. FUTURE WORK
Our future work will include incorporating iris tracking
capabilities which will help the user in navigation and will
further enhance the accessibility of the chair. We are also
considering incorporating line following system in the wheel
chair which will add to its autonomous capabilities and will
help the user reach the destination without many efforts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors of this paper would like to acknowledge the
Alma Mater Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology,
Bhopal.
REFERENCES
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