WheelIot: A Smart Wheelchair
A Different wheelchair for the special people using Internet of Things !!
We know that the needs of many people with disabilities can be overcome with power wheelchair, but some portion of this community is finding it difficult to operate due to many reasons. There are a lot of differently abled people who can’t afford power wheelchairs because of their high costs or due to the fact that they need extra knowledge to drive the wheelchair along.
As per a survey ASIA has a total of 400 million disabled people and in particular INDIA, has 20.68 million people. All these either use the conventional wheelchair or the ones that can afford costly wheelchairs priced over 50,000/-. Though we have evolved in the field of health care and technology, but we are still not good enough to solve difficulties of this huge sector of population that cannot afford power wheelchairs.
So, WheelIoT is a way for overcoming these issues and helping out that sector of people who really are in need of such facility. The main objective of this project is to felicitate and increase the movement of people who are handicapped and the ones who are not able to move freely.
Therefore, this design of a wheelchair which is controlled by a joystick includes obstacle avoidance technique accompanied with an emergency button and a health monitoring system.
Interrupt sensor is used to detect the obstacles .When there is any obstacle in front the sensor detects it with the help of transmitter and receiver. The piezo speaker is triggered and makes a noise. Analog Joystick is an input device used for two dimensional input. Joystick gives a facilitated control over wheelchair.DC geared motor is connected to Arduino Uno via motor drive IC L293D. DC motor doesn't have enough torque to drive a device (in our case a wheelchair) by directly connecting wheels in it. Gears are used to increase torque of DC motor on the expense of its speed. Rechargeable battery of capacity 12v is used. Regulated power supply is used to supply stable voltage (in our case 5V) to the circuit that must be operated within
certain power limits.
To monitor the temperature, thermistor temperature sensor is used and to monitor the heart rate pulse sensor is used. Panic button is also included for emergency. GSM module is used for communication between patient and the guardian. The data from temperature and pulse sensor are sent in the form of SMS to the guardian. Also during emergency cases the SMS is sent.