介助用車いすの自律走行化に関する研究(第1報)

一構想と実験機試作一

抄録

In a nursing home care facility, it is one of the factors that the burden of a caregiver is increasing by guiding many cared persons on a wheelchair before and after a meal. Although many autonomous electric wheelchairs have been researched and developed, it is not reasonable to introduce them for the entire care receivers in a nursing home from the viewpoint of cost, time and trouble of maintenance. We are developing a detachable robot which makes a manual wheelchair run autonomously. This report describes the experimental machines were prototyped by defining the basic concept, target specifications and design conditions, and the results of basic experiments such as straight running stability experiment, speed experiment, measurement experiment of obstacle sensor. In future, we will proceed with implementation of straight follow-up control function and autonomous driving function.