Abstract

Abstract
Nowadays the education on electrical engineering, in European countries, is facing on one side a high demand for engineers coming from industry and on the other hand a reduced interest from younger generation, whose interest is highly polarised by information and communication technologies. A permanent-magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) controller for an electric wheelchair demo track has been set up, in order to reinforce the demonstrative aspects of modern technology as a contribution to the motivation of students for the industrial electronics world. The motors are controlled at different operating conditions by means of a current control law using a low cost microcontroller board. The prototype has been designed specifically to meet the requirement of low cost and it contains all of the active functions required to implement the control of the electric wheelchair. The resulting prototype has a very low cost compared to commercial "black-box" modules. This prototype allows a first approach between a real technical system and power electronics, increasing the student's motivation for the power electronics area and to significantly enhance their skills to measure and interpret measurements and comparing those to theoretical predictions.

Abstract
The development of intelligent wheelchairs is a very good solution to assist severely handicapped people who are unable to operate classical electrical wheelchair by themselves in their daily activities. This paper describes the integration of a robotic simulator with our intelligent wheelchair shared control and planning modules. An adapted version of the free Cyber-Mouse robotic simulator was used to simulate the movement of the intelligent wheelchair in a hospital environment. Adaptations of the subsumption architecture, Strips Planning and A* Algorithms were employed and integrated to allow wheelchair intelligent behavior. The experimental results have demonstrated the success of the integration of these algorithms in our simulator allowing very safe motion of the intelligent wheelchair in the simulated hospital environment. Also, the adapted Cyber-Mouse simulator proved its capability and robustness in simulating the hospital environment and wheelchair physic characteristics.

Abstract
The area of object/people location consists on the identification of their instantaneous movement in a given area of space and during a given time frame. This location takes an important role because it can help rectify trajectories (in the case of autonomous objects) or improve the performance (in the case of sport practices). In this research project, a system based on RFID that automatically rectifies a location and calculates a wheelchair trajectory in a pre-defined route will be presented. For that, a commercial location system was used as well as a wheelchair and two routes: a linear one and a complex route. In order to correct the trajectory a low pass filter was also used. The obtained results showed that this approach decreased 38% of the mean squared error and in more than 7 centimeters the maximum error. In the future this research work will be enclosed in a new project where a multi agent system capable of executing a management of an autonomous wheelchair set in a hospital environment will be developed. © 2011 AISTI.

Abstract

Abstract
This paper proposes a method to develop an omnidirectional kick behavior for a humanoid robot. The objective is to provide a humanoid with the ability to kick in different directions and to make kicks look more like those of a human player. This method uses a Path Planning module to create the trajectory that the foot must follow to propel the ball in the intended direction. Two additional modules are required when performing the movement: the Inverse Kinematics module computes the value of the joints to place the foot at a given position and the Stability module is responsible for the robot's stability. Simulation tests were performed using different ball positions, relative to the robot's orientation, and for various ball directions. The obtained results show the usefulness of the approach since the behavior performs accurately the intended motion and is able to kick the ball in all the desired directions.