2004 Volume 124 Issue 7 Pages 699-705
Aged people and disabled people who have difficulty in walking are increasing. As one of mobility support, significance of a power assisted wheelchair which assists driving force using electric motors and spreads their living areas has been enhanced. However, the increased driving force often causes a dangerous overturn of wheelchair. This paper proposes a novel control method to prevent power assisted wheelchair from overturning.
The man-wheelchair system can be regarded as an inverse pendulum model when the front wheels are rising. The center-of-gravity (COG) angle of the model is the most important information directly-linked to overturn. Behavior of the system can be analyzed using phase plane as shown in this paper. The COG angle cannot be directly measured using a sensor, therefore, COG observer based on its velocity is proposed. On the basis of the analysis on phase plane, a novel control method with variable assistance ratio to prevent a dangerous overturn is proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by the practical experiments on the flat ground and uphill slope.
The transactions of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.C
The transactions of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.B
The transactions of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.A
The Journal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan