3D Virtual Path Planning for People

with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Through

Standing Wheelchair

Jessica S. Ortiz1,2(&), Guillermo Palacios-Navarro1(&),

Christian P. Carvajal2(&), and Víctor H. Andaluz2(&)
1
Department of Electronic Engineering and Communications, University of
Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
guillermo.palacios@unizar.es
2
Universidad de Las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE, Sangolquí, Ecuador
{jsortiz4,vhandaluz1}@espe.edu.ec,
chriss2592@hotmail.com

Abstract. This article presents the development of an autonomous control

system of an electric standing wheelchair for people with amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis. The proposed control scheme is based on the autonomous maneu-
verability of the standing wheelchair, for which a path planner is implemented to
which the desired 3D position is defined through the eye-tracking sensor. The
eye-tracking is implemented in a virtual reality environment which allows
selecting the desired position of the standing wheelchair. The wheelchair has a
standing system that allows the user to position himself on the Z axis according
to his needs independently of the displacement in the X-Y plane with respect to
the inertial reference system <R>. To verify the performance of the proposed
control scheme, several experimental tests are carried out.

Keywords: Virtual reality
Unity 3D
Standing wheelchair

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

1 Introduction

Currently there is an increase in people with motor disabilities, due to aging, longevity
and injuries that are usually the result of traffic accidents, this leads to the need to use
mechanisms to facilitate the mobility of people. The integration of robotic issues into
the medical field has become of great interest in recent years. Service, assistance,
rehabilitation and surgery are the more benefited human health-care areas by the recent
advances in robotics. Specifically, autonomous and safe navigation of wheelchairs
inside known and unknown environments is one of the important goals in assistance
robotics [1–9]. The technological advance in the area of robotics has allowed the
development of wheelchair prototypes, there are two types of wheelchair (i) standard
wheelchair which requires a person to move to the chair and (ii) electric wheelchair
with some degree of autonomy designed for people who can not perform actions of
movements of their extremities; these wheelchairs allow improving the lives of people
with disabilities, perform daily tasks and see the world with other possibilities [1, 2].
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018
S. S. Ge et al. (Eds.): ICSR 2018, LNAI 11357, pp. 181–191, 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_18
182 J. S. Ortiz et al.

There are research works associated with mobility in wheelchairs, e.g., in [4] the
automatic control is carried out that allows to position a wheelchair. In [5] it presents a
cascade controller in which it mentions a kinematic controller that saturates the speeds
of the wheelchair and a dynamic controller that compensates the dynamics of the
system; while in [8] the automation for the inclination of assisted wheelchairs is pre-
sented. Within the field of assistance the excessive use of wheelchairs leads to several
problems in the patient due to the position that is adopted in a wheelchair is not what
the human body should be subjected to. The most common problems due to the lack of
an upright posture are: affections in the intestinal functions, decreased blood circulation
to the lower extremities, increased pressure in the hip area, etc. To prevent this type of
anomalies, standing wheelchair has been designed which has the ability to walk on two
lower extremities, facilitating the use of the two upper extremities for the development
of daily activities and in humans can be determined as a natural posture [4, 10].
A robotic standing wheelchair is useful for handicapped people who are not able to
drive a standing wheelchair. Using a human-machine interface based on brain signals,
voice or eye movement the disabled person can select a desired target. Then, a path will
be automatically generated and a path tracking control will guide the standing
wheelchair to the desired target. Hence, a path will be automatically generated and a
path tracking control will guide the standing wheelchair to the desired target. As
indicated, the fundamental problems of the path following has been well studied and
many solutions have been proposed and applied in a wide range of applications. Let
P d ðsÞ 2 <2 be a desired geometric path parameterized by the curvilinear abscissa
s 2 <. In the literature is common to find different control algorithms for path fol-
lowing where is consider s(t) as an additional control input [11–21].
Este trabajo propone un sistema de mobilidad autónomo para personas con amy-
otrophic lateral sclerosis a través de eye-tracking sensor. The amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis is a degenerative disease that affects the motor neurons of the brain, brainstem
and spinal cord, which are the cells that control the voluntary muscular activity of acts
as essential as speaking, walking, eating or breathing. The degeneration of these
neurons causes the ability of the brain to perform muscle movement is lost and,
consequently, those affected have progressive muscle atrophy and causes a general
progressive paralysis. The capacity for voluntary movement is lost, but not the basic
senses or the intellectual capacity. In such context, this work considers that the user can
mobilize to a desired position through positioning in virtual reality environments, that
is, the user locates the desired position in a virtual environment and the system defines
the path that must be followed autonomously by the standing wheelchair. The path
following problem is addressed in this subsystem. It is worth noting that the proposed
controller does not consider s(t) as an additional control input as it is frequent in
literature. In addition, both stability and robustness properties to parametric uncer-
tainties in the dynamic model are proven through Lyapunov’s method. To validate the
proposed control algorithm, experimental results are included and discussed.
 3D Virtual Path Planning for People with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis 183

2 Structure System

For the development of the application and its functionalities, 4 stages are defined as
shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Multilayers diagram of system 3D design for path planning.

2.1 3D Bipedal Station Chair Design

The mechanical design of an object or robot is done in CAD software, in this case Solid
Works is used, which allows creating solids to be later assembled, allowing to obtain
complete 3D models. In Fig. 2 you can see the methodology to create the 3D model of
the chair and this model is used to interact in virtual environments.
The design of the chair recomposes by the coupling of two wheels that allow the
movement from one place to another, to lift a certain distance to the person in the chair
develops a system that rises together with the person safely and without sudden
movements, each part that makes up the chair is developed in Solid Works, parts are
assembled according to the real model obtaining as a result an assembly file *.sldasm.
Finally, the design becomes a model compatible with the UNITY 3D platform, using
the 3ds MAX software that allows exporting the Solid Works file to an extension file *.
fbx, this file format is fully compatible with the UNITY platform.
184 J. S. Ortiz et al.

Fig. 2. Scheme of the design the bipedal station chair 3D.

3D Environments
In the development of virtual environments, first, normal tasks are established by a
person, either to refuel from one room to another, to go to the kitchen, among other
tasks within the home, in the same way you select tasks that can be perform within an
industrial process to classify objects or the transfer of objects from one place to another.
Once the tasks to be done are stable, the implementation of the environments is
outlined, in SketchUp that is 3D modeling software that’s easy to use. Habitual
environments are developed in the home for a person as seen in Fig. 3 and industrial
environments are developed in the same way to transport objects from one place to
another Fig. 4, some objects are not designed from scratch but use is made of objects
already built, these models are exported in *.fbx format which contains the textures
given during the modeling towards UNITY 3D.

Fig. 3. 3D scenarios for tasks at home.

 3D Virtual Path Planning for People with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis 185

Fig. 4. 3D scenarios for tasks in industries.

Unity 3D Development
For development the 3D environments of the different tasks proposed for the Unity
application, you import the 3D models that will be part of the application. In the case of
the chair, the corresponding rotation points are assigned to each degree of freedom that
makes up Fig. 5. For the creation of the scenario, the developed 3D models are
imported, adding physical properties to be able to move and have the effect of collision
with objects during the displacement Fig. 6.

Fig. 5. Import model of the bipedal station chair to unity 3D.

Fig. 6. Import of the environment models to unity 3D.

186 J. S. Ortiz et al.

In the same way, the application has a menu to select the type of task that will be
carried out, allowing the user to manage the process that will be carried out, for the
selection is made use of the Tobii sensor that through the visual positioning of the
person is in the chair choose the 3D environment Fig. 7.

Fig. 7. Task management menu

3 Experimental Results

In order to perform the application performance validation, the proposed control law,
and the path planning method, two experiments are performed, in which the behavior
of the Bipeda Station Chair is observed in physical form and observed in time. real the
location of it within the virtual environment.
Experiment 1
The first experiment consists of selecting a task in which the person using the visual
sensor chooses the desired point to which he wishes to arrive inside a home, allowing
to obtain information of the desired point Pd ¼ ½ xd yd zd . Once the user selects
this desired point to get this information, it is sent to the Matlab software to correctly
manage the generation of the path to arrive avoiding collisions with objects that are
within the user’s path, in the Fig. 8 it is indicated first as you can select the desired
position to reach, in the same way you choose the height at which you want the chair to
reach the final point.
To continue with the execution of the system, the mathematical software is
expected to process this environment and generate the appropriate path for the person
to move autonomously to the desired position, in the Fig. 9 it is indicated as Matlab
through the algorithm of path planning.
In the same way in the virtual environment Fig. 10 you can see how the chair is
moving in real time by placing it in the position that should be according to the
odometry measured by the encoders in each of the engines that make up the chair.
 3D Virtual Path Planning for People with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis 187

Z=0.50 [m] x=5.1254

y=8.181
Z=0.60 [m]

Z=0.70 [m]

Z=0.80 [m]

Z=1[m]

START

Fig. 8. Selection of the desired point through the view.

2.5

Pd 1.5 Pd
1

0.5
Y[m]

-0.5

-1

-1.5

Pi -2
Pi
-2.5

-3
-3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
X[m]

Fig. 9. Post-processing the path in Matlab.

Experiment 2
The second experiment consists of selecting an another task, its task is about an
industrial process, consist translate a box to desired point Pd ¼ ½ xd yd zd . The
process to generate the path is similar to the first experiment, in the Fig. 11 it is
indicated first as you can select the desired position to reach, in the same way you
choose the height at which you want the chair to reach the final point.
The information is processed in Matlab for to generate the path, using the path
planning method implemented in this article, The Fig. 12. show the process informa-
tion for to create the path.
With the path generated in Matlab to reach the desired point, the control algorithm
enters execution, thus leading from the initial point of the chair to the desired point that
the user selected by sight, in Fig. 13 show the stroboscopic movement by the bipedal
station chair.
188 J. S. Ortiz et al.

Fig. 10. Moving in real time

Z=0.50 [m] x=2.5

y=1.5
Z=0.60 [m]

Z=0.70 [m]

Z=0.80 [m]

Z=1[m]

START

Fig. 11. Selection of the desired point through the view.

Finally, in the Fig. 14 you can see the movie made by the chair in the virtual
environment develops, you can see how it moves without colliding and reaching the
desired point.
 3D Virtual Path Planning for People with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis 189

2.5

1.5 Pd
1
Pd 0.5

Y[m]
0

-0.5

-1

-1.5

Pi -2

-2.5 Pi
-3
-3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
X[m]

Fig. 12. Post-processing the path in Matlab.

z[m]

Pd

y[m]

Pi
x[m]

Fig. 13. Stroboscopic movement of the chair.

4 Conclusions

In this work, the design and implementation of a system of autonomous mobility of a

bipedestación wheelchair was carried out. The system consists of defining the desired
position in a virtual environment through an eye-tracking sensor. The wheelchair has a
standing system that allows the user to position himself on the Z axis according to his
needs independently of the displacement in the X-Y plane with respect to the inertial
reference system <R>. To verify the performance of the proposed control scheme,
several experimental tests are carried out.
190 J. S. Ortiz et al.

Fig. 14. Real-time visualization of the path following in 3D interface.

Acknowledgments. The authors would like to thanks to the Corporación Ecuatoriana para el
Desarrollo de la Investigación y Academia – CEDIA for the financing given to research,
development, and innovation, through the CEPRA projects; furthermore to Department of
Electronic Engineering and Communications of the University of Zaragoza, Spain, and to Grupo
de Investigación en Automatización, Robótica y Sistemas Inteligentes, GI-ARSI of the
Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE, for the support to develop this paper.

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