Design and Construction of a Low-Cost Smart Solar-Powered Wheelchair

Patients with disabilities and/or various physical limitations such as paraplegics, quadriplegics, stroke patients, the elderly and others have used wheelchairs to help them move around and meet their daily needs. In other cases, wheelchair mobility depends on another person or caregiver, handlebar-oriented wheelchairs which are supposed to be the solution for these people can cause various problems because the wheelchair operation require basic shoulder movement with additional energy and inconveniences. This paper presents the design and construction of an extremely low-cost smart solar-powered wheelchair. The wheelchair consist of six major parts, namely: (i) an Arduino Uno Microcontroller embedded system development board that controls the overall operation and functionality of the wheelchair; (ii) an integrated solar panel-based automatic 12-V two-way back-up stabilized power system to support both in/our door use of the wheelchair, (iii) L298N motor driver module for the wheelchair four-wheel manipulations; (iv) photocell circuit built around on light dependent resistor (LDR) with banks of light emitting diodes (LEDs) for illumination in dark environment; (v) a HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor with a panic buzzer alarm for obstacle detection and alert; and (vi) an HC-06 Bluetooth module for the complete wireless control (speed and directions) of the wheelchair via a mobile application (App) on an android phone by the user. The designed and constructed low-cost smart solar-powered wheelchair has been tested, analyzed and its performances satisfy the aim and objectives of the project as well as satisfying the requirements of a standard wheelchair.