Abstract
A smart electric wheelchair for use as a personal mobility tool (PMT) has been proposed. To reduce the load on the user, the PMT is integrated with autonomous mobile robot navigation and human inputs. In addition, an obstacle avoidance function must be helpful for the user. Comfortable and relief movement is required to the obstacle avoidance of the PMT for a user and people around as well as safety and efficiency of the movement. Therefore this paper aims to realize the obstacle avoidance that does not get the user nerves and discomfort. We use the virtual impedance method as an obstacle avoidance method under dynamic environments. An experiment is conducted to evaluate the obstacle avoidance movement of the PMT from psychological affect point of view when different types of movement characteristics are set.
