Abstract
Human-friendly electrically powered wheelchair (EPW) with good riding comfort becomes a real requirement of aging society. Many factors such as seating, stability, mechanical noise, and operability are related to the riding quality of EPW, and the body tilting for the acceleration and deceleration of EPW is one of important factors. Especially in the case of speed control by the joystick a sudden acceleration or deceleration is easily to be caused and the riding comfort becomes bad. In this study, an improvement on riding comfort has been tried by applying the state feedback control with state observer based on the modeling of EPW system including an operator. With a two dimensional model considering the swinging in forward and backward direction the swinging of operator is restrained and the riding comfort is improved. A sensory test on riding comfort for the handicapped and healthy subject was carried out, and the effectiveness of the control method was verified. Though the dispersion of every subject is obvious on the swing of trunk, it was confirmed that the riding comfort is improved since the swing becomes smaller.
