Fusing Visual Tracking and Navigation for Autonomous Control of An Intelligent Wheelchair

This paper presents a hybrid navigation and control method for intelligent wheelchair. A robust and semi-supervised vision tracking method using Microsoft Kinect and obstacle avoidance navigation approach are integrated into a two-level control system. Then, position tracking control considering nonholonomic constraints are adopted for the motion control of wheelchairs. An indoor environment is set up for evaluating the application of the proposed approaches. The experimental results show that the proposed method is effective and can be used as a hands-free controller for the intelligent wheelchair.