A New Design Approach for Gesture Controlled Smart Wheelchair Utilizing Microcontroller

Every year, a large number of people become lame due to a road accident and unable to walk normally. Wheelchair is the best assistive device used by the older and differently abled people who cannot walk normally. The driving and controlling of traditional manual wheelchair are much harder task. The modern wheelchairs like joystick-controlled and voice-controlled wheelchair is a bit difficult to operate for certain people like the older and physically weak people. Moreover, this wheelchair is not cost effective. So the aim of this paper is to make such a cost-effective electronic gesture-based wheelchair which will be easy to operate rather than the joystick input to control a wheelchair using in-built gesture function of a smartphone and touch sensor. ATMega328 used as the processor long with the L298N motor driver, DC Gear Motor, Ultrasonic Sensor, TTP224 Capacitive Touch Sensor, Bluetooth Module and IP Camera. Special features of this wheelchair are that obstacles on the way of the wheelchair can be detected which can avoid the collision between the wheelchair and that detected obstacle. Another feature of this chair is to use an IP camera that gives visual and acoustic information to the guardian of the riding person.