Design of a smart wheelchair for hybrid autonomous medical mobility

Expanding autonomous vehicle technology into the field of medical mobility is a means by which wheelchair users can improve the locomotion in their lives by creating smart wheelchair platforms with improved human-machine interfaces. The design of a smart wheelchair is a multifaceted task incorporating hardware and software integration with sensor technology, computer processing and mobile power distribution. The revolution of new autonomous technology for consumer automotive and industrial applications has demonstrated the need of high-performance computing for real time data processing. A networked LabVIEW computer cluster is created to address the requirements of real-time autonomous path planning and sensor data processing. Four computers with Mini-ITX sized motherboards are connected over a Gigabit Ethernet local area network to form a high-performance computing cluster. Autonomous LabVIEW algorithms are distributed across the cluster to investigate the effects of task parallelism on processing time. The processing bandwidth of the distributed algorithms ranges from 50 Hz for path planning and motion control to 8.5 Hz for 0.5-megapixel robot vision image processing. A LabVIEW program is created to automate the activation and deactivation of the algorithms across the computer cluster from a single computer terminal interface while monitoring the operational status of the distributed algorithms during real-time operation. A centralized power distribution system is designed and integrated into an electric-powered wheelchair along with computer cluster and sensor array to create a smart wheelchair.