Intelligent Wheelchair System using Face and Mouth Recognition
Jin-Sun Ju, Yunhee Shin, Eun Yi Kim · Jeongbo gwahaghoe nonmunji. so'peuteuweeo mich eung'yong · 2009
In this paper, we develop an Intelligent Wheelchair(IW) control system for the people with various disabilities. The aim of the proposed system is to increase the mobility of severely handicapped people by providing an adaptable and effective interface for a power wheelchair. To facilitate a wide variety of user abilities, the proposed system involves the use of face-inclination and mouth-shape information, where the direction of an Intelligent Wheelchair(IW) is determined by the inclination of the user's face, while proceeding and stopping are determined by the shape of the user's mouth. To analyze these gestures, our system consists of facial feature detector, facial feature recognizer, and converter. In the stage of facial feature detector, the facial region of the intended user is first obtained using Adaboost, thereafter the mouth region detected based on edge information. The extracted features are sent to the facial feature recognizer, which recognize the face inclination and mouth shape using statistical analysis and K-means clustering, respectively. These recognition results are then delivered to a converter to control the wheelchair. When assessing the effectiveness of the proposed system with 34 users unable to utilize a standard joystick, the results showed that the proposed system provided a friendly and convenient interface.