Robotic Wheelchair Controlled by Eye Blink and Face Orientation
Andreena Joseph, D Antonio Thapeetha · 2015
This paper describes and evaluates intelligent robotic wheelchair mainly for quadriplegic patients. Each year huge number of people suffers with a spinal cord injury and approximately half of these injuries result in quadriplegia. The loss of personal mobility is one of the major life changes brought on by quadriplegia, mobility becomes a lifelong struggle. Quadriplegics rely on power wheelchairs for mobility, but the hands-free controller systems currently available are obtrusive and expensive. The objective of this project was to design a power wheelchair with a novel control system for quadriplegics with Face Orientations and eye blink.USB camera and eye blink sensor was fixed in front of user's face. Face area was detected based on AdaBoost learning algorithm. Then facial landmarks were detected using Flandmark Detector. Finally, face orientations were classified by the normalized distance difference in horizontal and vertical axes between eyes, nose and mouth. Face orientation, which is used for commands electric wheelchair, consists of frontal, right, left, up and down, the eye blink count used to start and stop function.In addition, we can give more independence to the disabled person by using this to communicate with the devices in a room for example a fan.