Human Assist Control of Electric Wheelchair by Using Control Barrier Function

Abstract

In a modern aging society, electric wheelchairs are an essential means of transportation for the elderly. However, human operation errors of the electric wheelchair cause some accidents. For a control system operated by a human, human assist control to avoid accidents attracts much attention in recent years. For this problem, Nakamura et al. have proposed a relaxed control barrier function and a human assist control law. However, considering the operability and safety, it was difficult to apply the proposed human assist control to an electric wheelchair. In this paper, we propose a novel human assist control law that can consider an assist profile function based on a relaxed CBF. We aim to design human assist control law that can be applied to electric wheelchairs. The effectiveness of the proposed control method is confirmed by simulations and actual experiments using an electric wheelchair.