Journal of Rehabil itation Research & Development IntellWheels: Modular development platform for intelligent wheelchairs

Abstract—Intelligent wheelchairs (IWs) can become an impor-tant solution to the challenge of assisting individuals who have disabilities and are thus unable to perform their daily activities using classic powered wheelchairs. This article describes the concept and design of IntellWheels, a modular platform to facilitate the development of IWs through a multiagent system paradigm. In fact, modularity is achieved not only in the soft-ware perspective, but also through a generic hardware frame-work that was designed to fit, in a straightforward manner, almost any commercial powere d wheelchair. Experimental results demonstrate the successful integration of all modules in the platform, providing safe motion to the IW. Furthermore, the results achieved with a prototype running in autonomous mode in simulated and mixed-reality environments also demonstrate the potential of our approach. Although some future research i