Accelerometer Based Direction Controlled Wheelchair Using Gesture Technology

This paper presents a model for Gesture controlled user interface (GCUI), and identifies trends in technology, application and usability. We present an integrated approach to real time detection, gesture based data glove technique which controls the wheelchair using hand movements. The paper proposed a low-cost and small 3-axis wireless accelerometers based system to control the wheelchair using microcontroller. The system is divided into two main components: Gesture recognition module with Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) sensor and wheelchair control. In the gesture recognition module the heart of the system is microcontroller. The MEMS sensor which is connected to hand, is an 3-axis accelerometer with digital output (I2C) that senses the angle of the hand, i.e. according to the tilt of hand it gives voltages to microcontroller. The wheelchair control unit is controlled using PC89C52 controller. The four proposed movements that achieved: are stop, backward, forward, left and right. Finally, the results of some tests performed with the controlled system are presented and discussed. Experimental results show that the system can recognize input gestures quickly with a reliable recognition rate. The users are able to perform most of the typical interaction tasks in virtual environment by this accelerometer-based device.