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The design, implementation, and testing of an adaptable optimal controller for an electric wheelchair are presented. Optimal control theory and pattern recognition techniques are combined to produce the design of a controller using a modified proportional, integral, and derivative (PID) control method. The controller is adaptable in the sense that multiple sets of control coefficients are used with each set being optimized for a specific range of wheelchair load parameters. The appropriate set of control coefficients may be automatically selected based on load parameter estimates to provide a self-adaptive controller, or manually selected prior to installation to tailor the chair to a particular user. The manually adaptable controller is implemented in a microprocessor-based system. The experimental results obtained from installing and testing the system on an electric wheelchair are presented and discussed.>
Brown et al. (Mon,) studied this question.