An Automated Wheelchair for Physically Challenged People Using Hand Gesture and Mobile App

Traditional wheelchairs which operate manully are difficult to use without the assistance of physical strength. This paper presents a model of an automated wheelchair for disabled people. The proposed wheelchair is battery powered and uses an Arduino microcontroller to operate. The whole system consists of two parts, one of them is the sending end and another part is the receiving end. The sender end records instructions from the user's different hand gestures which are collected using an MPU-6050 gyro accelerometer sensor. The instructions are continuously recorded and sent to the receiver end using an RF transmitter-nRF24101 through an Arduino microcontroller. At the receiving end, an nRF module receives the signal for mobilizing the wheelchair on a plain surface. Additionally, the device contains a Bluetooth module which can be used as a secondary control system. Hence our chair can be operated by a smartphone application too. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model is functional under normal circumstances with a fast response time which can be very useful for disable people to commute with.