Autonomous Wheelchair System That Travels Based on Degree Expressional Command

Abstract

This paper proposes DECoReS（Degree Expressional Command Reproducing System）that allows an autonomous wheelchair to travel autonomously through degree expressional commands. When users control an autonomous wheelchair through voice commands, they can sometimes give such orders as “go straight speedily” and “make a wide right turn.” These optional words called “degree expression” are appended to the commands to adapt the movement to the user’s preference. Because degree expressions are ambiguous, traveling styles described with degree expressions are altered depending on the users and environments. DECoReS realizes the movement adapted for each user by learning degree expressional commands, traveling data from the users, and map data. DECoReS also reproduces travels suited for users and his/her degree expressions even for a different environment by extracting a similar map from learned data. Our experiments show that DECoReS can reproduce different travels depending on degree expressional commands, individual users, and some different environments.