Eye Controlled Wheelchair To Self Service Quadriplegia Patients And Basic Health Parameters Monitoring

Advancement in the field of medical is a core concern these days. Providing facilities to the patients with more reliable and efficient equipment is focused for the betterment of patient?s life. Patients suffering from severe injuries and diseases like quadriplegia should have equal rights to live t

Project Title

Eye Controlled Wheelchair To Self Service Quadriplegia Patients And Basic Health Parameters Monitoring

Project Area of Specialization

Electrical/Electronic Engineering

Project Summary

Advancement in the field of medical is a core concern these days. Providing facilities to the patients with more reliable and efficient equipment is focused for the betterment of patient’s life. Patients suffering from severe injuries and diseases like quadriplegia should have equal rights to live their life with freedom and being independent to control their movement. Such designed project will ensure the self control of patient’s wheelchair and allow him to become socially independent. Image processing is the emerging technique widely used now a days. Through image processing the pixels of the image is converted into the digital signal that can be easily processed by the micro controller. Image processing is widely used in the field of medical and enable more efficient and accurate treatment plans.After the development of electric wheelchair and conversion of mechanical to electrical, the control of wheelchair by detecting the correct movement of eye was a challenge in the past but now with improved algorithms this is possible and can be implemented.Our project implement multiple algorithms to detect the movement of eye precisely and using the technique of image processing, the image captured by the web cam is converted to digital signal. In this way various devices are interface with each other to ensure reliable operation, reducing the processing time, improved safety and reducing human efforts.In underdeveloped countries like Pakistan, working on such projects will help in the advancement of country in terms of technology and providing more reliable products that are not readily available with reasonable cost.

To operate the wheelchair properly, a guide book will be provided to the user to make it more user friendly. All the necessary precautions will be clearly stated to use it without damaging any part. Not only the cost parameters will be controlled but the reliability and safety of the patients is fully ensured.

The wheelchair will be capable to drive the PMDC motors attached with the wheels in particular direction with the help of H bridge motor driver circuit. The driver’s input will be given by the micro controller Rasberry pi depending upon the signal generated by the eye. The detection of eye can be achieved by using a number of algorithms. The human face should be detected first using Viola Jones algorithm’s. Bag of pixels technique can be applied on face region to separate a region containing eyes and eyebrow. Color entropy in the eye region can be used to detect pupil Hough Transform can be used for detecting circle centre to obtain the pupil centre’s position in determining the eye-gaze direction. Kalman filter can be utilized to track the motion of a pupil at each time instance.

To reduce the risk of emergencies and death rate among such patients by continuously measuring the patients health parameters and automatic communication with the doctor /caretaker in case of any emergency. 

Project Objectives

The main objective of our project is vision based communication and control of wheelchair providing aid to self service Quadriplegia patients. The patients suffering from such disease are unable to move their four limbs, the condition may caused by a severe injury or accident that damage the spinal cord of a person. The patients are capable to move their eyes, keeping this thing as an opportunity we are  designing an electric wheelchair that can control the direction of motors according to the signal processed by the micro controller. Our second main objective is to detect the emergency situation by measuring the basic health parameters of the patient to reduce the risk of deaths among these patients due to sudden change in health parameters. In case of emergency, an alert message will be delivered to the doctor/caretaker of the person to provide necessary aid to the patient on time. Our aim is to design the whole system in reasonable cost that is easy to access for a normal person. As currently these type of wheelchairs are not readily available in the local market, the purchasing cost including with the import expenses make it almost unreachable for the patients.

The project will be targeting following aims and objectives:

• To self-service quadriplegia patients
• Smart monitoring of patient basic health parameters (Oxygen saturation in blood, Pulse rate, Blood pressure)
• Freedom to live without use of limbs like a normal person
• Vision-based communication and control of wheelchair
• Emergency situation detection
• Low-cost design of eye-controlled wheelchair
• Synchronizing patient health data with his smartphone using Bluetooth/Wi-Fi.

Project Implementation Method

The system would be consisting of electric wheel chair driven by dc motors controlled by microcontroller and control signal would be send from patient eye.

Quadriplegia patient would be blinking and moving eye in specific direction this movement will be captured by a webcam. The image captured by webcam will be transferred to microcomputer which will decide and generate the control signal to drive motors. It would be done by image processing techniques. Face recognition using viola jones algorithm would be performed and specific eye area would be identified. Using different algorithms (Hough transform)  pupil would be detected to trace movement of eye. After this a controlled signal would be decided based on movement or blinking. Microcontroller will then direct motor driver to execute that direction of motors. An ultra-sonic sensor would be placed in front of wheelchair to detect and avoid obstacles in front of it for safety purpose. A bracelet type sensor hub would be place around patient wrist to measure basic health parameters. A Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module will synchronize patient data with smartphone. A special system will be developed to organize and receive patient health data, to communicate continuously with caretaker/doctor and generate alert in case of abnormalities.

Benefits of the Project

Advancement in the field of medical is a core concern these days. Providing facilities to the patients with more reliable and efficient equipment is focused for the betterment of patient’s life. Patients suffering from severe injuries and diseases like quadriplegia should have equal rights to live their life with freedom and being independent to control their movement. Such designed project will ensure the self control of patient’s wheelchair and allow him to become socially independent. Image processing is the emerging technique widely used now a days. Through image processing the pixels of the image is converted into the digital signal that can be easily processed by the micro controller. Image processing is widely used in the field of medical and enable more efficient and accurate treatment plans.

After the development of electric wheelchair and conversion of mechanical to electrical, the control of wheelchair by detecting the correct movement of eye was a challenge in the past but now with improved algorithms this is possible and can be implemented.

Our project implement multiple algorithms to detect the movement of eye precisely and using the technique of image processing, the image captured by the web cam is converted to digital signal. In this way various devices are interface with each other to ensure reliable operation, reducing the processing time, improved safety and reducing human efforts.In underdeveloped countries like Pakistan, working on such projects will help in the advancement of country in terms of technology and providing more reliable products that are not readily available with reasonable cost.

To operate the wheelchair properly, a guide book will be provided to the user to make it more user friendly.

All the necessary precautions will be clearly stated to use it without damaging any part.

Not only the cost parameters will be controlled but the reliability and safety of the patients is fully ensured.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The project consists of Wheelchair fitted 24V 250W PMDC motors, a 24V battery as power source H bridge motor driver circuit, a raspberry pi camera module to capture eye movement, raspberry pi single board computer to control overall tasks and image processing tasks. The project also includes sensors hub to measure basic Health parameters like blood pressure, spO2 level in the blood and hearth rate. The circuitry operates on 5V and 3.3V driving from main power source using DC-DC buck converters. Motor driver circuit switches 24V polarity to control the direction of motor. A web camera continuously captures stream of images and pass these images to single board computer to perform image processing task. Using OpenCV, a computer vision library, movement of eye is then detected and specific direction signal i.e. start, left, right, stop is generated. For each intentional movement, the certain signal generated by the micro controller is then fed intro the H bridge driver circuit. An h bridge driver is best suitable for controlling the direction of PMDC motors. The driver circuit is designed using MOSFET which can handle large amount of current also they are fast switching devices drive through MOSFET driver ICs. The clockwise and anti-clockwise direction of current in the h bridge configuration will change the polarity of the DC motor and thus change the direction of rotation of the motors. The speed of wheelchair is kept low average 3-4 kmph to comfort the patient.

To provide the safety factor, an ultrasonic sensor is mounted at the front of wheelchair to detect any obstacle in the way of wheelchair. It measures the distance by transmitting a signal that is reflected by the obstacle and returned as an echo signal detected by the sensor. The time taken by the reflected wave and the speed of ultrasonic thus enable to measure the distance between the wheelchair and the obstacle.

Finally, the A bracelet type sensor hub would be place around patient wrist to measure basic health parameters. A Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module will synchronize patient data with smartphone. A special mobile application will be developed to organize, receive patient health data, communicate continuously with caretaker/doctor and generate alert in case of abnormalities.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Medical

Other Industries

Manufacturing , Health

Core Technology

Robotics

Other Technologies

Artificial Intelligence(AI), Internet of Things (IoT)

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com