Kinematic Optimization and Comparison of Wheelchair-mounted Assistive Robots for Activities of Daily Living

The number of wheelchair users has increased at an alarming rate throughout the last decade due to the increased number of individuals with upper/lower extremity dysfunctions resulting from a stroke, spinal cord injury, trauma, accident, or workplace injuries. Wheelchair-mounted assistive robots have been playing an important role in assisting the activities of daily living (ADLs) of these individuals. This research focuses on the design optimization of wheelchair-mounted assisted robots for essential ADLs. The genetic algorithm (GA) was used to estimate the link length parameters of 5 degrees of freedom (DoFs), 6DoFs, and 7DoFs wheelchair-mounted robots to cover the seven workspaces commonly used in ADLs. The objective function used in the GA includes singularity avoidance, collision avoidance, and ADL coverage. The results show that the proposed optimized 5DoFs robot can cover 25%, 6 DoFs robot can cover 69%, and 7 DoFs robot can cover 71% of essential ADL workspaces.