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08080889
08080889
Abstract—This paper presents a design and control of one- mechanical wheels. A similar electric power assistant system is
wheel type hybrid wheelchair which is operated by the manual researched for the handicapped person with 33[kg] weight of
power and electric power together. The proposed hybrid hybrid wheelchair[2].
wheelchair uses motorized one wheel for the manual wheelchair
to supply the assistant power. The proposed one-wheel type A front-wheel drive method is a good candidate for the
hybrid wheelchair uses a BLDC(Brushless DC) motor, and the motorized system with the manual wheelchair. However, the
motorized part can be easily attachable and detachable from the composition of the motorized part is very difficult. And, the
conventional manual wheelchair. In this paper, an indirect boarding and getting off are very difficult due to the front
estimation for PAS(Power Assistant System) is proposed. The guided drive system.
user requirement for the moving of the wheelchair is estimated
by the acceleration sensor. A novel estimation factor of the user This paper presents a design and control scheme of a one-
action is presented, then the reference torque for the assistant wheel type hybrid. The proposed hybrid wheelchair uses a
power motor is determined by the proposed factor. The detailed simple mechanical structure for the easy assembling and
design and analysis of the proposed hybrid wheelchair are decomposition to the manual wheelchair. In order to suspend
detailed presented with the simulation and experimental results. the weight of the user and produce the enough power, the
mechanical strength is analyzed. A proper mechanical coupling
Keywords—Hybrid Wheelchair, Power Assistant Control, of the motorized part is presented to connect to the
Acceleration sensor conventional manual wheelchair with the analysis of the
mechanical stress. Then the proper PAS(Power Assistant
I. INTRODUCTION System) is designed to add the electric power of
This motorized wheelchair is very important personal BLDC(Brushless DC) motor.
mobility for the handicapped peoples. Various motorized
For the hybrid system, the motorized drive can be driven by
wheelchairs are researched using BLDC(Brushless DC)
the joystick and the indirect estimation method of the user
motors, SRMs(Switched Reluctance Motors) and DC
action together. When the joystick is connected, the analog
motors[1]. Although, the motorized wheelchair is very
input of the joystick makes the speed reference of the
effective to extend the life area for the handicapped and old
wheelchair. Otherwise, the user action to the hand rim of the
person, the high cost and the heavy weight are main problems
wheelchair is estimated by the proposed method. A simple
to expand the supply. Furthermore, the big size of the
effect coefficient to estimate the user action is derived from
motorized wheelchair and heavy weight are not good to carry
acceleration sensor signals. Then the power assistant is
inside the vehicle. Compared to this motorized wheelchair, the
determined by the motor current reference from the proposed
manual wheelchair is very light to be carried and it has low
method according to the estimated action.
cost, but it is very difficult to move to long distance.
In the computer simulation and experimental results show
The hybrid wheelchair uses a manual power of the user and
the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid wheelchair.
the motorized power together to reduce the user labor. The
hybrid wheelchair uses the mechanical frame of the II. REVIEWS OF PREVIOUS RESEARCHES
conventional manual wheelchair, and a simple electric power
module is added. In the hybrid wheelchair, the main problem is In the previous researched literatures, various user
how to control the assistant power of wheelchair, and the command generating methods are presented[1-2]. The
mechanical structure for the easy assembling and easy mechanical torque sensor based method is introduced[1]. Fig. 1
decomposition. shows a wheelchair system using a torque sensor which is
attached on the rim of the wheelchair. The attached torque
An in-wheel type motor and drive system are replaced by sensor can measure the user input command directly. The
the conventional wheels of the conventional manual wheelchair motor drive of the wheelchair uses the measured input torque
to add proper assistant power[1]-[2]. The previously researched of the sensor to generate assistant power. This method is very
in-wheel type motorized wheelchair is very effective to reduce easy to make the assistant power command of the user. As
the weight of the system. However, the wheels should be shown in Fig. 1, the torque sensor has to be attached on the
replaced with the newly designed and expensive electro- each rim in the presented method, and the cost problem with
mechanical structure is the difficult to be adopted in the bottom of the seat. The maximum stress is 308Mpa and the
practical system. displacement is 2.95mm at the handle.
Another method is shown in Fig. 2. The EMG
(Electromyogram) sensor is used to analyze the user command
on the hand of the user[2]. The assistant power is determined
by the magnitude and sign of the EMG sensor signal. The
EMG method useful to make the reference of the wheelchair,
but the power of the user cannot be added in the presented
system due to the muscle signal changing at the power adding
point. Furthermore, the sensor signal can be changed by the
health state of the user.
suspended by the strong spring to make the suitable In order to satisfy the desired performances, the proper
suspension. The spring stress is analyzed by the ANSYS to power of the motor is calculated from the total driving force
bear the user weight and guarantee the enough suspension. At F as follows.
the mechanical frame of the in-wheel BLDC motor, the 24V
battery pack is fixed. The designed PAS controller is placed on F F F F (1)
the right side. In the left and right side frame, the proposed four F m∙a (2)
hinge locks are used to connect the rear frame of the
wheelchair. F m ∙a (3)
F F F F (4)
In (1) ~ (4), F is the acceleration force of the wheelchair,
F is the acceleration of the tire in the wheel, and F denotes
the load force to run the wheelchair with the considerations of
the maximum weight, and climbing angle.
The maximum load of the wheelchair is the climbing
resistive load F at the maximum angle. The load can be
estimated as follow.
F m ∙ g ∙ sin θ (5)
Fig. 5. 3-D model of the proposed motorized part Where, θ is 5.7[deg] at the 10% the climbing angle.
With the considerations of the total load and speed, the
Fig. 6 shows the FEM analyzed results of the designed maximum torque of the motor is 12[Nm].
motorized part. As shown in Fig. 6, in the maximum load of
the wheelchair, the proposed system can suspend the In this paper, 24[V]-300[W] in-wheel type BLDC motor is
disturbance load from the user weight and battery weight. The determined for the assistant power of the hybrid wheelchair.
maximum load is suppressed in the center point of the frame
which is connected point of the in-wheel BLDC motor. And IV. DESIGN OF THE PAS CONTROLLER
the designed aluminum frame can withstand the disturbance In order to control of the BLDC motor, the user
load without any serious distortion of the frame and connection requirement has to be correctly estimated. In the proposed
part of the proposed design. hybrid wheelchair, the BLDC motor can be operated by the
joystick command or the proposed indirect estimation method.
When the joystick is connected to the BLDC motor controller,
the analog input signal of the joystick can make the reference
speed of the motor. The forward and backward references can
be easily determined by the joystick. In this mode, the
wheelchair is operated as full motorized power without any
human power assistant. In the PAS(Power Assistant System)
mode, the pulling force is added together with manpower and
motor power. In order to add the proper assistant power in the
wheelchair, the user actions have to be correctly estimated
when the user adds the manual power to the hand-rim of the
wheelchair.
In this paper, indirect estimation of the user reference from
the acceleration sensor is proposed to add the assistant power.
Fig. 7 shows the basic definition of the motion to estimate the
Fig. 6. Mechanical stress analysis of the proposed motorized part
user action. In Fig. 7, the motion of the wheelchair is defined as
x,y and z-axis directions based on the center of the seat. When
B. Design of the Electric System the user wants to move the wheelchair, the user has to handle
the hand-rim of the wheelchair. Then the acceleration sensor
Table I shows the required performance of the hybrid can detect the motion of the wheelchair instantaneously. The
wheelchair. motion frequency of the user is under 2 ~ 5[Hz], but the
acceleration signal can be detected almost 1[kHz] frequency.
TABLE I. DESIRED PERFORMANCE
So, the user information can be estimated by the detected
Pay load Total Weight Climbing angle Mileage acceleration signals with the proper analysis method. The
125[kg] 10[kg] 10% 10km actual motion of the wheelchair can be expressed by the 3-axis
direction at the center of the wheelchair as shown in Fig. 7.
2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo, Asia-Pacific (ITEC Asia-Pacific)
Fig. 8 shows raw acceleration signals of 3-axis according to (a) Forward motion
the user action and user intensity. In the forward and backward
action, the y-axis which is front direction signal is changed.
And the variation is dependent on the user intensity. Other
directions signals are almost constant in the forward and the
backward action.
(b) 3-axis acceleration signals of the backward action Fig. 10. Current reference generator for the power assistant
Fig. 8. Acceleration signals from the wheelchair motion
Fig. 11 shows the global block diagram of the proposed
Fig. 9 shows calculated motion angles which are derived by hybrid wheelchair. The current reference I ∗ is derived by the
the acceleration signals according to the user action. The actual proposed indirect estimation method of the user action. Then,
motion angles are dependent on the added intensity and the PI(Proportional-Integral) current controller is adopted to
moving direction of the wheelchair. As shown in Fig. 9, the y- keep the reference current. The voltage command of the current
axis and z-axis motion angle are changed as negative value controller is used to determine the duty ratio of the PWM(Pulse
from the forward action of the user. And, the y-axis motion Width Modulation) of the inverter. The power of the inverter is
supplied by the battery which is fixed in the designed body.
2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo, Asia-Pacific (ITEC Asia-Pacific)
(a) Forward moving Fig. 14. The manufactured proto-type hybrid wheelchair
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, an one wheel type hybrid wheelchair is
presented with the mechanical design and the proper indirect
PAS(Power Assistant System). The proposed hybrid
wheelchair is consisted by the conventional manual wheelchair
and the attachable motorized part to add the assistant power
according to the user motion.
For the easy assembling and decomposition, the proper
mechanical hinge and lock are presented with the FEM
analysis of the mechanical stress and displacement in this
(b) Backward moving
paper.
Fig. 15. The experiment results of acc signal and current reference
The proposed PAS with the indirect estimation of the user
action uses the acceleration sensor signal to predict the
wheelchair motion. The proposed effect factor with the
consideration of the motion angles can properly estimate the
motion of the wheelchair. The reference current to move the
wheelchair can follow the user reference.
In the computer simulation and experiments, the proposed
hybrid wheelchair can keep the user action such as forward and
backward with the presented indirect estimation method.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by “Human Resources Program
in Energy Technology ” of the Korea Institute of Energy
(a) Forward moving Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP), granted
financial resource from the Ministry of Trade, Industry &
Energy, Republic of Korea. (No. 20164010200940) and
supported by The Leading Human Resource Training Program
of Regional Neo industry through the National Research
Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science,
ICT and future Planning(NRF-2016H1D5A1910536)
REFERENCES
[1] J. S. Kong, "Development of the Driving-will Control System for a
Power-assisted Electric Wheelchair", Journal of the Korea Academia-
Industrial cooperation Society, Vol. 13, No. 3, March, 2012, pp. 1296-
1301
[2] Y. Oonishi, S. Oh, Y. Hori, "A New Control Method for Power-Assisted
(b) Backward moving Wheelchair Based on the Surface Myoelectric Signal", IEEE
Fig. 16. The experiment results of the proposed PAS method TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 57, NO.
9, pp. 3191-3196, Sep. 2010