Remote Monitoring and Control of an Electric Powered Wheelchair in an Assisted Living Environment

:Ambient Intelligence can be defined as an evolution from the conventional automation systems, which are a set of computers, sensors and actuators that ubiquitously and pervasively have the purpose of facilitate the execution of daily tasks. One very important derivation from Ambient Intelligence are the Assisted Living Environments that are complex systems designed to help people interacting with other devices. The impact of such systems in everyday life is more easily observed when talking about users with disabilities. That is the case of the project described in this paper. Modifications were made to an electric-powered wheelchair in order to enable its remote control by using mobile devices. Those modifications have focused on the wheelchair control system and aimed to emulate it in software so that Smartphones and Tablets could control the wheelchair. Details of the developed system, with emphasis on the telematics control will be given along the paper.