Recent Developments in Gesture-Based Navigation for Electric Wheelchairs: A Literature Review

Abstract

Nearly 15% of the world's population, of which 2–4% have functional issues, lives with a handicap, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report. To get about, they require a wheelchair. If we look at basic wheelchairs, they cost between INR 2000 and INR 8000, but the user needs more assistance or power to go from one location to another. These days, advanced wheelchairs like speech recognition-controlled, joystick-controlled, and MMI-controlled wheelchairs are also available; their prices range from INR 80,000 to 150,000. In this scenario, using a wheelchair in one way is more difficult for disabled persons, costly, and most importantly reliant on others. Most people with impairments overall have mobility issues. We made a hand gesture-controlled wheelchair to make their lives a little easier. This wheelchair will operate based on the user's hand gestures. Physically handicapped people constantly struggle to go from one location to another; they must rely on someone else to push their wheelchair as they go from one area to another. We tried to create a "Gesture Controlled Wheelchair" to solve this issue. This wheelchair is also manually operable. Arduino Lilypad and Arduino Uno are used in this work because they are open-source electronic platforms that are simple to use in both the hardware and software sections.