Development of Shared Autonomy Human–Machine Control Interfaces for Intelligent Wheelchair Mounted Robot Arm Systems

Collaborative Research Program for 2022-2024

In this project, we propose to develop new multimodal shared autonomy human-machine control interfaces (HMI) for intelligent WMRA systems, aiming to provide impaired patients with the ability to comfortably control assistive devices with minimal efforts by integrating Bayesian user intent inference methods with MPC-based real-time motion planning, so is to follow the human control commands, while autonomously avoiding collisions with humans and obstacles. In this way, a patient controlling the wheelchair/WMRA can obtain precise wheelchair motion and/or robotic arm reaches with little effort using standard joystick and/or newly designed multimodal HMIs. In addition, the developed HMIs would also shorten the time needed to train the patient users, therefore improving the usability of WMRA systems and, thus, offering a way to improve the patients’ quality of life.