COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Development of an Automatized wheel chair involving image processing and state of the art hardware tools
Our aim to the development of an automatized wheel chair is to facilitate the disabled people who can not even move their hands. For the purpose of its development image processing of the person operating the wheel chair is required. The image acquisition is done through the camera, which is interfaced to the wheel chair motors through an intelligent deivce. The intelligent device may be a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) or a combination of a General Purpose Processor (GPP) and a DSP. The image processing algorithm is running on the DSP whereas a GPP is used for control operations. The input to the wheel chair is an image taken by the camera and is being processed by the DSP and GPP and finally the two stepper motors are controlled. The wheel chair movement is controlled by stepper motors. The head movement determines the wheel chair position. The movement can be forward, backward, left and right.
Members
  1. Wajid Mumtaz
  2. Qaiser Anwar
  3. Kamran Qureshi
In this project we have three phases.
Phase I (Simulation)
In this phase image would be acquired via a camera interfaced with MATLAB. To process the image exploring and examining of motion detection methods and algorithms would be achieved using the acquired Image. Motion detection algorithms would be tested on the image. These algorithms would be firstly tested on standard recorded videos and then be shifted to real-time videos. In a simple and sound logic to simulate the head movement, necessary for smooth processing, a sensitive square box build around the head will act as a threshold. Next a logic to send signals to parallel port is implemented.
Phase II (Hardware Development)
This is the hardware phase where a controller circuit is build to control the wheel chair using microcontroller. Interfacing the controlling circuit of the wheel chair with the PC and debugging and testing of the controller circuit would also be included in this phase.
Phase III (Hardware programming and Debugging)
This is the final phase of the project. The MATLAB code is converted to C code. The code then burned in the intelligent Device. Camera interfaced with the microcontroller and controlling circuitry of the wheel chair. At the end testing and debugging of the total circuitry is done.

The schematic of the microcontroller based control system of the proposed adapting unit is shown Figure 02. The electronic control board is based on a 8 bit low-cost micro-controller Microchip PIC16F628. The commands from four switches are sent to the microcontroller which operates as a central processing unit. The microcontroller then calculates the number of steps and drives the x- and y-axis stepping motor via a driving IC: ULN2803A. The status of the operating mode: “Forward”, “Neutral” or “Reverse” are indicated by LED L1, L2 and L3, respectively. The energy for the control board is supplied by the main battery system 24 Vdc of the power wheelchair, regulated to 12 Vdc and 5 Vdc by an IC regulator.
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