2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Development of Taylor Made Electric Wheelchair Realizing Comfort Drive for Various Passenger

Research Project

Project/Area Number	20760168
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Intelligent mechanics/Mechanical systems
Research Institution	Toyohashi University of Technology
Principal Investigator	NODA Yoshiyuki Toyohashi University of Technology, 工学部, 助教 (60426492)
Project Period (FY)	2008 – 2009
Keywords	人間機械システム
Research Abstract	This study is concerned with a driving control system for electric wheelchair considering sway suppression of passenger's body. Since the passenger's posture behavior differs according to the frame and disability, the wheelchair's driving control is required to adopt the passenger's character. Therefore, in this study, the passenger's posture behavior model considering the passenger's frame and muscle strength is proposed. Since the model is involved that the passenger's body contacts to the backrest, the passenger's behavior can be represented by the proposed model precisely. By using the proposed model, the wheelchair driving control system is developed. Then, the developed wheelchair driving control system is evaluated a ride quality by subjective assessment and sweat measurement as objective evaluation. Furthermore, by using the passenger's behavior simulator, the proposed driving control system is constructed to the wheelchair taking the passenger with muscle weakness, and then the effectiveness of the proposed driving control is demonstrated in the simulation.