Stairs Detection for Enhancing Wheelchair Capabilities Based on Radar Sensors

TL;DR

This paper presents a radar-based system for detecting stairs to improve wheelchair mobility, utilizing a mirror-based FMCW radar scanner for robust environment sensing in various conditions.

Contribution

Introduction of a mirror-based 2D FMCW radar scanner and a stair dimensioning method for enhanced wheelchair obstacle detection.

Findings

Radar effectively detects stairs in laboratory and real-world settings.

The system provides accurate stair dimensioning information.

Radar's environmental robustness improves wheelchair safety and autonomy.

Abstract

Powered wheelchair users encounter barriers to their mobility everyday. Entering a building with non barrier-free areas can massively impact the user mobility related activities. There are a few commercial devices and some experimental that can climb stairs using for instance adaptive wheels with joints or caterpillar drive. These systems rely on the use for sensing and control. For safe automated obstacle crossing, a robust and environment invariant detection of the surrounding is necessary. Radar may prove to be a suitable sensor for its capability to handle harsh outdoor environmental conditions. In this paper, we introduce a mirror based two dimensional Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave (FMCW) radar scanner for stair detection. A radar image based stair dimensioning approach is presented and tested under laboratory and realistic conditions.