Towards Real-World Applications with an Autonomous Powered Wheelchair

2026-07-07

AI Summary

This work addresses the limited capability of existing powered wheelchairs to integrate advanced perception and autonomous navigation in complex real-world environments, which hinders the provision of proactive and intuitive mobility assistance. Building upon the commercial self-balancing wheelchair Genny Zero, the study presents the first fully autonomous assistive prototype that combines RGB-D–based human detection with long-range gesture recognition, LiDAR-based localization and navigation, and a leader–follower strategy constrained to indoor settings to enable “summon” and “follow-me” functionalities. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this integrated approach in realistic scenarios, highlighting the potential of autonomous robotics to enhance assistive mobility devices while identifying key challenges that must be overcome to achieve user-ready systems.

Abstract

Wheelchair users call for assistive mobility systems that provide active support, adapt to dynamic environments, and are intuitive and user-friendly. However, powered wheelchairs typically still provide limited autonomy and lack effective integration with advanced perception and navigation capabilities, particularly in complex real-world environments. This paper presents a preliminary study toward autonomous powered wheelchairs for real-world assistive mobility. We introduce a proof-of-concept prototype that integrates autonomous perception, gesture-based interaction, and navigation on a commercially available self-balancing powered wheelchair. The proposed system builds upon Genny Zero, a commercial self-balancing wheelchair that enables hands-free and intuitive operation through body-weight shifting. To extend its capabilities toward autonomous operation, we integrate an RGB-D camera for human-aware perception and interaction, together with a LiDAR sensor for localization and navigation. We demonstrate the integrated system in two assistive applications: (i) hailing, allowing users to call the wheelchair from a distance; and (ii) people-following, where the wheelchair follows a person using leader-follower strategies, including a constrained indoor navigation example. The results highlight the potential of combining autonomous robotics with assistive mobility platforms, while also showing the feasibility of the proposed integration and identifying the main technical challenges that must be addressed before moving toward user-ready, accessible, and intelligent mobility solutions. A video demonstrating the experimental setup and results is available at: https://youtu.be/LVAix_Qx7bM.

Problem

• autonomous powered wheelchair
• assistive mobility
• real-world environments
• perception and navigation
• user-friendly interaction

Innovation

• autonomous wheelchair
• human-aware perception
• gesture-based interaction
• LiDAR navigation
• assistive robotics