Smart Wheelchair For Differently Abled People

Inspiration :

We had been to a military campus where differently-abled people (quadriplegic) were kept. We were there for a long duration and I noted a point even for their day-to-day activities movement they had to be dependent on someone else and due to it it happened they were unable to maintain their hygiene which deeply influenced me.

Wheelchair options available In market :

In market broadly classifying there are two options :

Manually Operated / Push Based.

Joy-stick Based.

Problem with Available Models :

Manually Operated / Push Based :

The person using them needs to have hands so that he can rotate the wheels but in case of quadriplegic they need to be completely dependent on someone for their mobility ie. hygiene and many other such problems are faced by them.

Joy-stick Based :

The person using them either needs to have hands or legs so that he can use joy-stick but in case of quadriplegic they need to be dependent completely on someone for their mobility ie. hygiene and many other such problems are faced by them.

On the above observation I would conclude that there is no wheelchair rather device for quadriplegic people using which they can move on their own.

What it does To overcome above problem :

We have tried to solve the above problem and also inherit the positive points form the above models.

Initially let's see what we have done to solve the problem :

As our main focus was on quadriplegic ones we have given voice based control mechanism.

Now let's see how it works :

We are using 'Google Voice API' to fetch input from user and then match the input with preset commands.If it matches an appropriate volt would be generated on motor ports from arduino so that motor would move in appropriate direction at proper speed.

If the person is unable to speak and is quadriplegic in that case we have given accelerometer based control (assuming he can move any of his body part slightly where we can tie the phone)

Now let's see how it works :

As he moves the phone values would be generated which will be send to arduino where they would match the coordinate range we has set and then arduino would generated appropriate volt on motor ports so that motor would move in appropriate direction at proper speed.

As said above we have tried to take pros of other models let's see them. As in joy-stick based we were able to control it using joy-stick we have taken this point and instead of wasting cost on joy-stick we are using same mechanism from phone where we have a button which dragged in either direction wheelchair would move in that direction. Also we have given 4 direction buttons on which when pressed wheelchair would move in that direction.

Challenges I ran into :

As we can't guarantee when an electric component would be damaged due to physical factors like water damage or any other factor or considering that we forgot to charge batteries we tried to make the product light-weight. For these instead of using iron we used high-grade plastic which made it lightweight and shock-proof too.Now even if batteries are down we can push the wheelchair. Also to reduce weight instead of lithium ion batteries we used gel batteries which make them compact and more long-lasting.

How I built it :

The main components of my system are electronic circuit which includes arduino, motor driver, hc05, android application.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of :

We had registered for patent and it's published in IPR Journal 2018.

What's next for Smart Wheelchair For Differently Abled People :

I wish to start its manufacturing under a good brand so that it can be available to everyone at cheap rate and would help to ease their life