No abstract

To effectively provide the handicapped with mobility aids, studies on the shared autonomy of robotic systems have been widely cultivated. This study proposes an adaptive shared control strategy to realize reliable and safe driving assistance on an intelligent electric wheelchair with protection against human errors. The theoretical framework of the system is analyzed by the linearized reference wheelchair model and stable characteristics of obstacle avoidance behavior can be subsequently derived according to the Lyapunov analysis and Liénard-Chipart criterion. Based on the convex analysis, the relationships between human input and robot control are investigated to determine shared control weights. As such, safety and reliability can be guaranteed. To verify the performances of the proposed approach, human errors including skill-based errors, decision errors, and violations are considered in the experiments. The experimental results based on a comprehensive study show that the proposed method is capable of enhancing driving safety and reducing operation burden in terms of the designed criteria with fluency, smoothness, and time efficiency while protecting the user from human manual errors.

This paper proposes a robotic walking-aid system which aims to provide mobility assistance and remote monitoring for the elderly or the disable. The robotic system is able to provide physical support and guidance while avoiding static and dynamic obstacles. To effectively solve different situations against obstacles, a training stage of learning human user-adaptive characteristics is adopted. Through wireless communication and localization technique, the user operation status, including the position of robot, can be monitored by the server. In this server, we also develop a call-to-come service for the robotic system. The experimental test-bed has a cart-based configuration with a nonholonomic differential drive mainly for forward direction. Experimentation and evaluation are presented to present the validity of the developed robotic system.