Fabrication of a Hand Gesture Controlled Wheelchair

Hand-gesture controlled wheelchairs help in providing mobility and safety to individuals with physical disabilities or mobility impairments. In this paper, a wheelchair have been fabricated so that it can be controlled by hand-gestures and move smoothly in all 4 directions. The main focus of our research has been to drive down the cost of such a wheelchair as compared to the ones already available in the market to enable penurious people to afford it. An accelerometer sensor is fitted in the data glove to read the hand movements and the information is conveyed to an Arduino microcontroller using wires. The Arduino board controls the pair of DC wiper motors attached at the rear end on each wheel of the wheelchair. The proposed mechanism has demonstrated precise responsiveness to users' hand gestures during trials.