Stitch

components
CAD model of wheelchair without components
Two motors used to move wheels
nice picture with the nice weather of our nice project!

Inspirations

The team took inspiration in aiming to improve the quality of life and user effectiveness for operating a wheelchair.

Process

Firstly, the CAD model was printed and scaled to fit our electrical components, such as the motors, underneath the wheelchair. For glove actuation, we came upon an IMU (Inertia Measurement Unit) that combined an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer in one microcontroller. Halfway through the competition, we struggled to compile and organize the data values outputted from the IMU because neither sensor detected tilt angle. We found that best to determine the tilt by taking the integral of the rotational velocity from the gyroscope. After the challenge with the IMU, the team chose the two calculated values necessary to relay information to the motors, which were the x and y axes. This accounted for the direction of tilt (left or right), and to move forward and backward. With this, the team made major progress but hit a wall when it came to figuring out a central intermediate to relay information between the glove, Arduino, and motors. Wanting to make a wireless connection, we learned we could use double Kitone Bluetooth modules to make a connection and relay information there. However, it was more difficult than anticipated, and discovered a more efficient way by transferring through a Wifi server. The variables could be written on a file, which is then sent over to a server and then relayed to the motors to determine the directional change.

Accomplishments The Team is Proud of

The team immediately clicked when we began working together, bouncing ideas off of one another making the learning and progress more efficient.

What We Learned

From each of the team members: Gael: I learned about the myriad of opportunities when using Arduino. Being a complete beginner and having to work on it the first time under a time constraint made me nervous but I was able to get a general understanding of how to use and code C on it. I've learned a lot in such a short period but I felt that it gave me the necessary experience to grow in my academic career.

Tharshini: I learned how to use different sensors and microcontrollers to gather data and make it from something that makes no sense and convert it to something successful and readable in the end. Additionally learning how to wifi module and being able to motor driver and figuring out the schematic for the wiring was really interesting...

Mandip: I learned about the limitations of bluetooth and wifi arduino modules along with how IoT plays a role in programming and how to utilized it to gather and read data. Also, I feel stronger in protyping and using arduinos along with programming with them.

What's Next?

To take the project a step further, we would like to improve on debugging our code as well as implement more sensor actuation such as maybe the accelerometer sensor to determine the velocity or other factors.