Abstract
In this paper, a control system for electric wheelchairs based on electrooculography (EOG) was developed, so that disabled persons having a disability in muscles such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patient can control the electric wheelchair by their eye movement. EOG signal is measured by four electrodes which were attached around user's eyes. Then, five kinds of user's eye movements, namely right gaze, left gaze, up gaze, down gaze and blink, are identified by threshold criteria. Thus, using the motorized control device of the joystick developed in our previous study, the electric wheelchair can be controlled by a command assigned to user's each eye movement. To assess the developed control system, accuracy of identification for eye movement was investigated and experiment of slaloming was executed. As a result, 87.5% identification accuracy on average was obtained for five subjects. However, in EOG based control, running time took about three times as compared with the manual joystick control.
