Abstract
Many kinds of head movements and facial expressions based human machine interfaces (HMIs) have been developed for hands-free control of electric-powered wheelchairs in order to assist disabled and elderly people. Most of these HMIs have a fixed configuration and do not allow users to choose a configuration suitable to their needs. It becomes necessary to provide users with different control modes and flexible configurations. This chapter presents five flexible bi-modal modes for hands-free control of a wheelchair that allow users to choose the most comfortable facial expressions and head movements. An Emotiv sensor is deployed to collect facial expressions and head movements for the bi-modal control modes. Two healthy subjects have participated in experiments, and have chosen their best configurations of the modes for controlling the wheelchair. Experimental results show that bi-modal control modes are flexible and allow users to select their preferred configurations for controlling the wheelchair reliably.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the EU Interreg SYSIASS project: Autonomous and Intelligent Healthcare System (http://www.sysiass.eu/), and the COALAS project: Cognitive Assisted Living Ambient System (http://www.coalas-project.eu/). The COALAS project has been selected in the context of the INTERREG IVA France (Channel)—European cross-border co-operation programme, which is co-financed by the ERDF. The 1st author has been supported by the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT), through the program “Becas para estudios de posgrado en el extranjero” (no. 183592) and by the Secretariat of Public Education of the Mexican Government (Secretaría de Educación Pública del Gobierno Mexicano) through the scholarship “Programa de apoyo al posgrado, beca complemento, ciclo 2013”. Our thanks also go to Robin Dowling for his technical support during the research.
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Rechy-Ramirez, E.J., Hu, H. (2014). Flexible Bi-modal Control Modes for Hands-Free Operation of a Wheelchair by Head Movements and Facial Expressions. In: Rodić, A., Pisla, D., Bleuler, H. (eds) New Trends in Medical and Service Robots. Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05431-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05431-5_8
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