Robotic wheelchair with omni-directional vision for moving alongside a caregiver

Recently, several robotic/intelligent wheelchairs equipped with user-friendly interfaces and/or autonomous functions to fulfill set goals have been proposed. Although wheelchair users may wish to go out alone, caregivers often accompany them. Therefore, it is important to consider how to reduce the caregivers' load while supporting their activities and facilitating communication between the caregiver and wheelchair user. Hence, we have proposed a robotic wheelchair that can move alongside a caregiver by observing his/her behavior, such as body position and orientation. This form of motion enables easy communication between the wheelchair user and the caregiver. However, in our previous system, the caregiver had to set their own initial position by tapping the touchscreen displaying the distance data image captured by a laser range sensor. In this paper, therefore, we introduce a new interface we designed by incorporating an omni-directional camera so that the accompanying caregiver can easily set the initial position by tapping his/her facial image instead. Moreover, when the system loses the accompanying caregiver due to them making an unexpected motion, it promptly re-identifies the caregiver by using color appearance cues. These functions improve the usefulness of our robotic wheelchair and heighten the possibility of our wheelchair being utilized in our daily life.