Wheechair for Virtual Environment Navigation

This work is developing a device, based on a wheelchair, to allow navigation in a virtual reality environments. The main goal is to build a validation tool for architectural environments, with the focus on accessibility for disabled people. Using this device, the wheelchair user can check, without any risk, if the built environment is appropriate for his heeds. Using two video cameras, the speed of both wheels of the chair are determined by image processing algorithms and transformed into displacement inside the virtual environment. The figure below shows the wheelchair with two labels used to capture the speed of the wheels.