In recent years, many Robot Technology (RT) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have been introduced into the agricultural field. Many of them are aiming to automate tasks such as harvesting strawberries. However, there are many challenges in fully automating such tasks with robots. For example, simplifying the operation of the robot is challenging, and the high initial cost for introducing RT and ICT technologies becomes a barrier for farmers to install them. In the case of soil cultivation, a worker has to bend forward at the waist and move sideways. A wheelchair to reduce the burden of this work on the body is commercially available. However, this chair has only passive wheels, so the worker must move it on their legs. In this study, we developed an electric wheelchair with an intuitive user interface. The chair is equipped with a pressure sensor on the seat and wheels with a motor. Using the pressure sensor, we calculate the direction in which the passenger wants to move from the weight shift of the passenger, and then the chair assists the passenger in the calculated direction. We used Fuzzy control to assist the movement of the passenger to suit the passenger preference of the assistance. To show the effectiveness of the electric wheelchair, we compared the difference of the surface EMG on the lateral great muscle of both legs during the movement on a flat ground using between the proposed electric wheelchair and a passive wheelchair.
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