Development of an Autonomous Wheelchair for The Disabled and Performance Analysis Using ANFIS Model

Abstract

Navigation for persons with physical disability very often poses a major challenge to both the victims and their dedicated navigation assistance-provider. This age-long problem has been a major concern in diverse research fields in the literature ranging from assistive medicine to applied intelligence amongst others. This research work is a build-up to the literature, hence, has presented an automated wheelchair system designed, fabricated and enhanced with joystick capability for obstacle detection and autonomous stoppage. A microcontroller unit known as Arduino uno was built into the system architecture to synchronise the entire set-up by driving the DC motor for directional and linear motion of the wheel chair. The developed system would greatly improve the community of people who have lost some means of independent mobility thereby leading to an improvement in their self-esteem enabling them pursue their vocational and educational goals. Conclusively, the developed system was tested using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), the sensitivity rule viewer at the first trial gave a total intelligence of 63.8%, further improvement was made and a second trial gave a rating of 75% and the final gave a value of approximately 80%. This shows that the system is efficient, effective and of excellent performance.