Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
26 Motor-Aided Wheelchair
 Guangxun Zhai
Jiacheng Huang
Zilin Zhao
 William Zhang design_document1.pdf
design_document2.pdf
design_document3.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
photo1.jpg
photo2.jpg
photo3.jpg
presentation1.pptx
proposal1.pdf
# Team Members:



* Guangxun Zhai (gzhai5)
* Zilin Zhao (zilinz2)
* Jiacheng Huang (jh59)


# Problem



* A wheelchair with a person sitting in it is heavy, so it takes a lot of effort to push, especially at the beginning (from rest to move).
* When moving a long distance, there might be several stops (for example, when fronting obstacles or traffic lights). Whenever you need to restart pushing the wheelchair, you need to apply extra force for acceleration, which is exhausting.


# Solution

Our proposal is to build a motor-aided wheelchair to help people push, which exerts a smooth assisting force to the wheels according to the pusher’s force. In this way, the pusher is able to apply a small portion of the total force, and the motor is able to compensate for the rest part, which saves the pusher a lot of effort.


# Solution Components


## Wheelchair

We will use the pre-designed wheelchair from the previous semester, which already has motors connected to the wheels.


## Motor

Several motors connect to wheels, giving assisting powers to the wheelchairs. Based on the mode selected, motors will provide different levels of power to wheels that assist the movement of the wheelchair. Motors will have a maximum speed limit for safety concerns.


## Force Detection

Force detection unit, using load cells, to detect how much force and what direction the force is pushing. By determining the magnitude and direction of the force of both handles, we are able to determine the movement of which the pusher is trying to push the wheelchair. The force detection will also have a maximal force limit for safety concerns.


## Smooth Function

Based on force detection, the motor will provide corresponding extra power to the wheels to give the person who is pushing the wheelchair an extra help. The whole point of this function is to determine how much the extra force should be applied to the motor. The function will consider multiple cases including pushing, pulling, turning left and right, stopping. The smooth function will also have a maximum acceleration limit locked for safety concerns.


## Control Panel

A control panel is provided for the person sitting in the wheelchair with command of moving forward, backward, turn right, turn left, and stop. All commands other than stop are optional. The stop command on the control panel has the highest priority for safety concern, so that the person sitting in the wheelchair is able to stop it immediately.


## Microcontroller

We are considering using STM32 as the control unit, which receives data from the force detection unit, calls the smooth function, and transmits the result of the smooth function to the motors. The control panel is able to interrupt the microcontroller to perform the highest-priority stop command.


## Hand Tracking (Optional for Safety Concerns)

A camera and a small computer are applied for hand tracking detection. This camera will track the hand gesture of the person sitting in the wheelchair, sending the signal to the small computer, which processes computer vision analysis. The only hand gesture we add in this project is a stop command for safety consideration. When the person sitting in the wheelchair puts his hands wipe open towards the camera (because this is what our hands usually do when falling), the wheelchair stops.


# Criterion For Success



* Starting from rest, a pusher behind the wheelchair is able to use a small, smooth force to push the wheelchair forward.
* For safety concerns, a maximum speed of the wheelchair is set, once the speed exceeds the limit, the motor is going to exert negative force to slow the wheelchair down.
* Also, the person sitting in the wheelchair is able to use the control panel to immediately stop the wheelchair when something goes wrong.
* (Optional) When the person sitting in the wheelchair raises and expands hands, the wheelchair stops.

Logic Circuit Teaching Board

Younas Abdul Salam, Andrzej Borzecki, David Lee

Featured Project

Partners: Younas Abdul Salam, Andrzej Borzecki, David Lee

The proposal our group has is of creating a board that will be able to teach students about logic circuits hands on. The project will consist of a board and different pieces that represent gates. The board will be used to plug in the pieces and provide power to the internal circuitry of the pieces. The pieces will have a gate and LEDs inside, which will be used to represent the logic at the different terminals.

By plugging in and combining gates, students will be able to see the actual effect on logic from the different combinations that they make. To add to it, we will add a truth table that can be used to represent inputs and outputs required, for example, for a class project or challenge. The board will be able to read the truth table and determine whether the logic the student has created is correct.

This board can act as a great learning source for students to understand the working of logic circuits. It can be helpful in teaching logic design to students in high schools who are interested in pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering.

Please comment on whether the project is good enough to be approved, and if there are any suggestions.

Thank you