EMG based controller for a wheelchair with robotic manipulator

Abstract

There is an increasing demand for the wheel chairs which could make decisions by a cquiring information from the surrounding,for the wheel chair users all around the globe. Such type of wheel chairs is called intelligent wheel chairs and are using different types of high level controlling algorithms to control it self. Using EMG based controller for high level decision making has become are liable and efficient method due to the high signal to noise ratio of EMG signals and the ability of them to bring out the users’ intentions successfully. Usually, those EMG based controllers are in corporated with another modality to achieve the desired tasks through the intelligent wheel chairs. An EMG-based high-level controller which can be stand-alone with out the aid of other modalities is rarely foundin the literature. Even the available such type of controllers is mostly designed for the users with full/partial upper limb functions. However, such types of controllers can not beused by the wheel chair users with trans-humeral amputation/trans-radial amputationdue to the absence of the required muscles.This paper proposes an EMG based high level controlling algorithm for then a vigation input generation and to detect the intention forusing a robot manipulator for reach to grasptask,for an intelligentwheel chair with a robotic manipulator.The proposed controller has been designed for wheel chair users with trans-humeral amputation/ trans- radial amputation.But it can beused by any type of wheelchair user with neck functions and full/partial functions of both upper limb suptothehumerus.Experiments have been done with the healthy human subjects to validate the efficacy of the proposed highl evelcontroller.