Smart chair: um carro arduíno como protótipo de uma cadeira de rodas inteligente

Abstract

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, in its last census (2010), about 38 % of Brazil’s population has at least one type of motor disability, with numbers above 50 % in people over 64. This proportional increase in the prevalence of disability in relation to age comes from the limitations of the aging phenomenon itself, where there is a gradual loss of visual and auditory acuity and the motor capacity of the individual. Besides aging, there are several other reasons that can be found on the basis of motor deficiency, such as traffic accidents, degenerative diseases, violence and so on. In view of the limitations of traditional devices such as wheelchairs, new technologies are designed to provide greater autonomy to individuals with disabilities, aiming at improving their quality of life and integration with society. In view of the above, this work aims to present a prototype intelligent wheelchair able to transit in an indoor environment, using preestablished coordinates. The prototype is based on an Arduino car programmed to follow routes according to the selected coordinates. For the tests of this prototype, a demarcation was used on the floor of a research laboratory, simulating the delimitation of an environment and the Arduino car simulating the wheelchair.