Evaluating the performance of a face movement based wheelchair control interface in an indoor environment

This paper presents a novel facial movement based human machine interface for an intelligent wheelchair to operate in an indoor environment. Five random selected intact subjects are designated to control a wheelchair by using the proposed control interface. The testing is carried out in a designed indoor environment. The system performance is evaluated by implementing same tasks ten times, with the criteria of control easiness and the time spent on each task. The experimental result shows that this new control strategy can assist disabled and elderly users for hands-free control of an electric powered wheelchair. © 2010 IEEE.