@phdthesis {426, title = {Sistema de posicionamiento y autolocalizaci{\'o}n para sillas de ruedas aut{\'o}nomas}, year = {2001}, month = {12/2001}, pages = {298}, school = {Alcala}, type = {PhD}, address = {Alcal{\'a} de Henares}, abstract = {

This Ph. D. thesis is aimed at the global objective of designing an appropriate architecture to add autonomous navigation through structured indoors performances to powered wheelchairs, but always keeping in mind the type of vehicle and the special needs of potential users.

Starting from that generic objective, diferent aproaches to a solution have been derived. About the hardware architecture, a modular one has been defined by using a standar Serial Bus coming from the world of industrial and home automation. Main contributions of such architecture come from the capabilities of exchanging information between vehicle and any indoor environment, by using appropriate interfaces; those performances make easier the uploading of topological maps of the environment, even those never visited before.

Such architecture allows the design of Human-Machine Interface modules, easy to be reconfigured in order to be adapted to the special needs of a wheelchair user, even in case of severe discapacities. A main porpouse of this approach is to keep user priority over the machine, if this is possible; this is because, from an user\’s point of view, allways is better a direct drive than an assisted one.

For those cases that need a fully autonomous navigation, the defined architecture allows to add such performances over the same basic platform; this characteristic is important from an economic point of view. Main block of this thesis is focused on the design of a Localization and Positioning System (LPS) with appropriate characteristics to be installed on board of powered wheelchairs and with a minimal impact and cost over the infrastructure of buildings.

Basic component of the LPS is an codified artificial landmark (known as Localization and Positioning Mark, LPM), that have been designed by the author under the following rules: low cost and high eficiency in terms of information density and recovery of information procedures. The LPM has got unique characteristics, in the actual author\’s knowledge, among similar systems documented by other research groups; this is because the combination of geometric parameters, local positioning parameters, and codified informations aimed to get a global localization in a topological map of the indoor environment.

Cycle closes with the design of a navigation model apropriate to structured indoor environments; this model uses the recovered codified information from the LPM in order to know, despite any kind of indetermination, the global localization of the vehicle. Afterwards, route and path planning is easier to make by knowing a topological map of the building or indoor environment, that can be uploaded on-line while passing through main access points, so it is possible to navigate autonomously even in buildings never visited before; that one is a new performance that highly contributes to the advance in the Assisted Mobility technologies.

}, keywords = {artificial vision, assisted mobility, assistive technology, global positioning system, local positioning system}, attachments = {https://panel.geintra-uah.org/en/system/files/Tesis-JC-Sistema_Posicionamiento.pdf}, author = {Garcia, Juan Carlos}, editor = {Manuel Mazo and Ure{\~n}a, J.} }