Design and development of a seamless indoor-outdoor navigation system for assistive wheelchair

• Main Author: Lai, En Han
• Other Authors: Ang Wei Tech
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/167953
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

An assistive robot is a robot that assists humans with disabilities in their daily lives. This project focuses on an assistive wheelchair robot that is designed to drive the user to different places autonomously. A person in a wheelchair robot needs to go to different places, making the workspace of the robot oundless. However, the existing navigation system only allows the robot to navigate in a single map. In other words, if the existing navigation system were implemented on the wheelchair robot, a gigantic map that models everywhere the robot goes would be required. On top of that, a SLAM method that works effectively in any environment needs to be determined as the workspace of the wheelchair robot consists of indoor and outdoor environments. Thus, an evaluation of the state-of-the-art SLAM methods was conducted to find out if such SLAM is available. Based on the evaluation outcome, we learned that different SLAM methods should be used for different environments because a one-size-fits-all method for indoor and outdoor navigation could not be determined among the evaluated SLAM methods. Thus, instead of having one map for the entire wheelchair robot’s workspace, multiple SLAM methods have to be used as the wheelchair robot navigates in different environments. In this project, a novel navigation architecture is pro posed to develop a system that can connect multiple maps and SLAM methods to achieve seamless indoor-outdoor navigation. Eventually, the developed navigation system was deployed on the assistive wheelchair robot and tested in indoor and outdoor environments. Although some limitations were observed, the outcome has shown that the system has successfully enabled the wheelchair to navigate from indoor to outdoor and vice versa seamlessly.