SLAM-Based Autonomous electric wheel chair.

This was my favourite projects so far I've done during the past few years. Also, this was one of the hardest because I had to learn lots of new technologies to complete this project. This was done during my internship at image processing lab, SIT Japan.
This was done to overcome a big problem in hospitals in Japan. Problem was the lack of workers to do simple tasks like moving wheelchairs inside the hospitals So they need a solution to autonomously navigate these wheelchairs inside hospitals.
As a solution, we worked on to create a system that can be used to convert electric wheelchairs into autonomous driving mode.
In this system, we used a laser scanner called RpLiDAR which emits low power infrared laser as its light source to measure distance and it emits in a short time frame. Therefore unlike radio waves, infrared light does not affect any sensitive pieces of equipment or human body which means this method is ideal for usage in hospitals and to reduce human intervene fo operating wheelchair.

The system was developed using Robotic operating system and we used G mapping to create maps of the surrounding environment while navigating autonomously.
Below are some pictures of the wheelchair along with pictures of some of the created maps.

Above video was captured while the wheelchair is navigating through a corridor

Wheelchair attached with the RP lidar on top

Picture of an RPlidar a1m8

Picture of a created map while navigating

We were able to publish our work on ICIPRob Conference and was awarded the Best Student paper of that conference. It will be published on IEEE Explorer in the near future.