日本福祉工学会誌 論文 概要

日本福祉工学会誌 Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 12-17 (2016)

傾斜対応型パワーアシスト車椅子の制御

浜克己,関谷大地,本間雄大,鈴木学,中村尚彦

Control of Power Assist Wheelchair Corresponding to Slopes

Katsumi HAMA, Daichi SEKITANI, Yudai HONMA, Manabu SUZUKI and Takahiko NAKAMURA

A wheelchair is an effective transportation for physically challenged and elderly persons. A manual wheelchair is affordable and is also useful to prevent a muscular power from lowering, but is desired to correspond to driving on slopes. In particular, when a wheelchair runs on a cross slope, it turns to the lower side, and there is a risk causing to an accident. Then, it is necessary to add a large force to the lower side wheel in order to remove the load by the slope and to make the wheelchair go straight on. However, the operation is a difficult task for a user. The purpose of this study is to develop a control device that adequately assists according to the angle of the inclination and enables the user always to roll the wheelchair with the similar feeling on level ground. Through running experiments using the prototype wheelchair mounted with the control device, the effectiveness was confirmed.

Key words: Wheelchair, Transportation, Physically Challenged, Power Assist, Driving on Slope, Cross Slope