The CoNav autonomous wheelchair developed by U-M engineers offers customers the choice of taking management. Credit score: Vineet Kamat, Carol Menassa
Autonomous applied sciences promise passengers journey with out concern—the flexibility to get from Level A to Level B while not having to be engaged within the course of. But passengers nonetheless do not belief computer systems the best way they belief human drivers, and most autonomous autos on the highway immediately are geared up for a human to take over.
The identical applied sciences that enable autonomous autos (AVs) to navigate metropolis streets can even give motorized wheelchair customers the flexibility to get from place to position with out personally controlling the chair, however wheelchair customers additionally desire a method to override the pc. Engineers on the College of Michigan goal to supply that performance.
Most wheelchairs obtainable to these needing common transportation are both totally guide, or totally autonomous—with few choices in between. The analysis group is harnessing the sunshine detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors and an onboard digital camera to permit folks with disabilities the mixture of freedom to let the software program drive and oversight when the person is much less trusting of autonomous selections.
“The sweet spot is something we call ‘shared control’ or ‘shared autonomy,’ where the robot is assisting you to the extent you want, but it is not ever putting the passenger in a situation where they cannot control their destiny,” stated Vineet Kamat, the U-M John L. Tishman Household Professor of Building Administration and Sustainability and a professor of civil and environmental engineering.
“People with physical disabilities primarily want to maintain their independence but have significant navigation and maneuvering challenges operating in the built environment.”
In lots of cases, the prospect of getting to steer by way of a posh or crowded pathway could discourage folks with disabilities from partaking in social, enterprise or instructional alternatives. Within the U.S., roughly 2.7 million per yr expertise well being points that require using a wheelchair.
Credit score: College of Michigan
Kamat and Carol Menassa, a U-M professor of civil and environmental engineering and a John L. Tishman Building Administration College Scholar, have collaborated for years, serving to robots to grasp and purpose with constructed environments, each indoor and outside.
This yr, their analysis group was capable of outfit a motorized wheelchair with each LiDAR and a 3D digital camera, faucet into the wheelchair’s drive system and write algorithms that will enable for shared management with the assistance of a online game controller.
“Trust is very important in this type of situation, because there are so many things at stake,” Menassa stated. “You want to trust that you are going to be safe and that any people in the environment are going to be safe.”
It is the identical downside being encountered by the auto trade. In Oct. 2023, J.D. Energy reported: “Consumer confidence in fully-automated, self-driving vehicles continues to decline for the second consecutive year… Consumers show less readiness on all metrics, with the lowest level of comfort riding in a fully automated, self-driving vehicle and using fully automated, self-driving public transit.”
They’ve been testing their system, referred to as CoNav, within the basement corridors of the G.G. Brown Constructing on North Campus with able-bodied volunteers manning the chair.
“Feedback between the user and the system is very important,” Menassa stated, “and that is the feedback that’s going to, over time, initiate or establish that trust.”
The analysis group consists of Yifan Xu, a U-M graduate scholar analysis assistant; Jordan Lillie a U-M biomedical engineering technician; and undergraduate scholar Qianwei Wang.
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Merging autonomy with guide management for wheelchair customers (2025, April 21)
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