Maintaining formation of multiple robotic wheelchairs for smooth communication

Suzuki, Ryota*; Kobayashi, Yoshinori*; Kuno, Yoshinori*; Yamada, Taichi ; Yamazaki, Keiichi*; Yamazaki, Akiko*

To meet the demands of an aging society, research on intelligent/robotic wheelchairs have been receiving a lot of attention. In elderly care facilities, care workers are required to communicate with the elderly in order to maintain both their mental and physical health. While this is regarded as important, having a conversation with someone on a wheelchair while pushing it from behind in a traditional setting would interfere with their smooth and natural conversation. So we are developing a robotic wheelchair system which allows companions and wheelchair users to move in a natural formation. This paper reports on an investigation to learn the patterns of human behavior when the wheelchair users and their companions communicate while walking together. The ethnographic observation reveals a natural formation of positioning for both companions and wheelchair users. Based on this investigation, we propose a multiple robotic wheelchair system which can maintain desirable formations for communication between wheelchairs.