Teleoperation Training Environment for New Users of Electric Powered Wheelchairs

Training environments help new users of the electric powered wheelchair (EPW) to improve their driving skills and acquaint with this assistive technology device. Several authors are developing these environments, most of them are based on a virtually simulated wheelchair. They sustain this approach due to its low infrastructure cost, and because these environments avoid the risk of accident for the practicing users and others involved. However, it was observed two main difficulties in those virtual environments, the first is the physical representation problem, and the second is the limited number of driving methods. For the first problem, in a comparison between driving the real and virtual devices, it was verified that it is easier to drive the real wheelchair. For the second problem, the current virtual training environments are based on the joystick, and do not cover alternative driving methods, such as eye-tracker. These alternative methods might be the only option for people with severe disabilities to drive the wheelchair. In this context, it was created a training environment for new users of EPW based on teleoperation through multiple driving methods. The proposed system allows users to remotely conduct a wheelchair and receive a video streaming feedback in real time. Also, the system has a low-cost, which makes it suitable for developing countries like Brazil. For the system’s evaluation, it was created scenarios considering the implemented driving methods, and also scenarios considering a long distance teleoperation. The results showed that it is possible to drive with multiple methods through teleoperation, even with a linear distance of 2596 km between the EPW and the user.