A unified approach to accessibility for a person in a wheelchair

Adapting the environment for a person with physical needs consists first and foremost to assess areas that may pose a problem of accessibility. Two problems arise: the person seated in a wheelchair must be able to approach an object and then grasp it. The placement of the mobility device has a significant influence on the grasping capabilities. We propose in this paper a unified method for evaluating the accessibility of objects in a domestic environment. The idea is to model the human articulated system and the mobility device and then to evaluate the existence of a global solution of the inverse kinematics. We propose to use our methodology to label a complete environment by checking at each point, whether it is accessible or not to a person, whose joint constraints are known, for moving in an indoor environment with obstacles.

Research highlights
► Adapting the environment for a person with physical needs consists first and foremost to assess areas that may pose a problem of accessibility.
► Two problems arise: the person seated in a wheelchair must be able to approach an object and then grip it.
► We propose a unified method for evaluating the accessibility of objects in a domestic environment by modelling the human articulated system and the mobility device and then to evaluate the existence of a global solution of the inverse kinematics.
► We propose to use our methodology to label a complete environment by checking at each point, whether it is accessible or not for a person, whose joint constraints are known, for moving in an indoor environment with obstacles.