Artificial intelligence for safe assisted driving based on user head movements in robotic wheelchairs

Wheelchairs users don’t always have the ability to control a powered wheelchair using a normal joystick due to factors that restrict the use of their arms and hands. For a certain number of these individuals, which still retain mobility of their head, alternative methods have been devised, such as chin-joysticks, head switches or sip-and-puff control. Such solutions can be bulky, cumbersome, unintuitive or simply uncomfortable and taxing for the user. This work presents an alternative head-based drive-control system for wheelchair users