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This paper addresses a new collaborative control method for robotic wheelchairs. The original method was specifically designed for disabled people who are unable to drive a robotic wheelchair on their own. Its main novelty was that the wheelchair just provided the amount of help needed at each moment, to avoid loss of residual abilities. This wheelchair was tested by volunteering in-patients in Casa Agevole at Fondazione Santa Lucia (FSL) in Rome. However we found that in-patients with severe cognitive impairment were not able to complete complex trajectories despite wheelchair help. Thus, this works presents the improvement of these control techniques, more suitable for severe patients. We present a modified efficiency based collaborative control scheme based on modulation of assistance using biometric sensors, as well as preliminary results of this technique.
Fernández et al. (2009) studied this question.