PLATFORM TO DRIVE AN INTELLIGENT WHEELCHAIR USING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Pedro Miguel Faria, Rodrigo A. M. Braga, Eduardo Valgôde, Luís Paulo Reis

2007

Abstract

Many of the physically injured use electric wheelchairs as an aid to locomotion. Usually, for commanding this type of wheelchair, it is required the use of one’s hands and this poses a problem to those who, besides being unable to use their legs, are also unable to properly use their hands. The aim of the work described here, is to create a prototype of a wheelchair command interface that do not require hand usage. Facial expressions were chosen instead, to provide the necessary visual information for the interface to recognize user commands. The facial expressions are captured by a digital camera and interpreted by an application running on a laptop computer on the wheelchair. The software includes digital image processing algorithms for feature detection, such as colour segmentation and edge detection, followed by the application of a neural network that uses these features to detect the desired facial expressions. A simple simulator, built on top of the known (Ciber-Mouse) was used to validate the approach by simulating the control of the intelligent wheelchair in a hospital environment. The results obtained from the platform provide strong evidence that it is possible to comfortably drive an intelligent wheelchair using facial expressions.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Miguel Faria P., A. M. Braga R., Valgôde E. and Paulo Reis L. (2007). PLATFORM TO DRIVE AN INTELLIGENT WHEELCHAIR USING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS . In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 5: ICEIS, ISBN 978-972-8865-92-4, pages 164-169. DOI: 10.5220/0002394101640169


in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis07,
author={Pedro Miguel Faria and Rodrigo A. M. Braga and Eduardo Valgôde and Luís Paulo Reis},
title={PLATFORM TO DRIVE AN INTELLIGENT WHEELCHAIR USING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 5: ICEIS,},
year={2007},
pages={164-169},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002394101640169},
isbn={978-972-8865-92-4},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 5: ICEIS,
TI - PLATFORM TO DRIVE AN INTELLIGENT WHEELCHAIR USING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
SN - 978-972-8865-92-4
AU - Miguel Faria P.
AU - A. M. Braga R.
AU - Valgôde E.
AU - Paulo Reis L.
PY - 2007
SP - 164
EP - 169
DO - 10.5220/0002394101640169