Citation

Seki H, Takahashi K, Tadakuma S. IEEJ transactions on industry applications 2008; 128(2): 137-144.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008)

DOI

10.1541/ieejias.128.137

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper describes a novel safety driving control scheme for electric power assisted wheelchairs based on the regenerative braking system. "Electric power assisted wheelchair" which assists the driving force by electric motors is expected to be widely used as a mobility support system for elderly people and disabled people, however, the safe and secure driving performance especially on downhill roads must be further improved because electric power assisted wheelchairs have no braking devices. The proposed control system automatically switches the driving mode, from "assisting mode" to "braking mode", based on the wheelchair's velocity and the declined angle and smoothly suppresses the wheelchair's acceleration based on variable duty ratio control in order to realize the safety driving and to improve the ride quality. Some experiments on the practical roads and subjective evaluation show the effectiveness of the proposed control system. 2008 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.

Language: en

Keywords

Automobile drivers; Wheelchairs; Quality control; Control systems; Braking performance; Brakes; Electric machine control; Power control; Electric power system control; Regenerative braking