Journal of Medical and Biological Engineering, 32(1): 61-69

61
Dynamic Model-Based Adaptive Posture Controller for
Robotic Wheelchairs
Celso De La Cruz Wanderley Cardoso Celeste Teodiano Freire Bastos
*

Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidade Federal do Esprito Santo, Vitoria 29075-910, Brazil
Received 27 Mar 2010; Accepted 24 Oct 2010; doi: 10.5405/jmbe.761

Abstract
A novel adaptive posture control for robotic wheelchairs was designed using feedback linearization techniques and
Lyapunov theory. It is novel in that it uses a dynamic model of the mobile robot in the posture-control law. A switching
control that changes the parameter-updating law is used to improve the adaptive control to avoid the effects of
parameter drift. Experimental results show good performance of this adaptive posture control.

Keywords: Robotic wheelchair, Dynamic model, Adaptive control, Posture control
1. Introduction
A robotic wheelchair is useful for handicapped people
who are not able to use conventional wheelchairs. One of the
features of robotic wheelchairs is that their users can select a
desired target using a human-machine interface based on brain
signals, head movements, eye blinks or eye movements; then
the robotic wheelchair goes automatically to the desired target.
To accomplish this, a trajectory tracking control and/or a
posture control are necessary.
The research of [1] provides an integrated solution to
motion planning and control of robotic wheelchairs with human
inputs from three sources: at the highest level, the human
operator selects the destination; at the intermediate level, the
user interacts with the controller to avoid obstacles; and at the
lowest level, the human operator directly provides velocity
commands using a joystick.
In other research [2], driving by breath-expulsion,
voice-command guidance, and guidance by head movements
and electro-oculographic signals (EOG) have been tested using
a robotic wheelchair. Other contributions of [2] are in the
sensory system and the control system. The sensory system
uses ultrasonic and infrared sensors as well as a laser emitter
and CCD camera detector to obtain information on the
surroundings that allows the wheelchair to be located. The
control system uses an optimal-adaptive control law along with
optimal-fuzzy trajectory tracking.
A third study [3] describes a prototype of a robotic
wheelchair with manual, semiautonomous, and autonomous

* Corresponding author: Teodiano Freire Bastos
Tel: +55-27-40092077; Fax: +55-27-40092644
E-mail: tfbastos@ele.ufes.br
modes. The choice of mode usually depends on parameters
such as single-switch or proportional human-machine interface
sensors, modeled or non-modeled environment, etc.
Because robotic wheelchairs carry a heavy load, it is
important to consider the dynamic model in the control-law
design. In the literature, control-law design can be found for
mobile robots based on the approach of feedback linearization
[4,5]. The control law designed using that approach has good
performance, but it depends on the dynamic model parameters.
When the model parameters are unknown, it is necessary to
have an adaptive control to update such parameters. Some
authors designed the adaptive control law based on
backstepping techniques such as [6]. Others used a
feedback-linearization approach to design the control law based
on linear systems theories, then designed the adaptive law
using Lyapunov theories, such as [4]. In [7] the kinematics is
separated from the dynamics. Thus, a kinematic control law is
used at a high level to control the position of the mobile robot.
In addition to that, a dynamic control law is used at a low level
to control the velocity of the mobile robot.
This work develops a novel adaptive posture-control law
for robotic wheelchairs. The posture controller is novel in that
it uses the dynamic model in the control law. The posture
controllers that can be found in literature are generally based on
the kinematic model [8,9]. The feedback-linearization
techniques and Lyapunov theories are used in the adaptive
control laws design. The controller design is made for a
defined class of model output functions. Then, according to the
control objective (posture control or only heading control), the
output function is defined. The switching scheme of [10] is
used in the adaptive control law. This scheme switches between
an adaptive control and a non-adaptive control. The
non-adaptive control keeps the model parameters constant, and
it is turned on when the control error is small. Thus it avoids
J. Med. Biol. Eng., Vol. 32 No. 1 2012

62
the parameter drift problem, which is caused by measurement
errors, noise or disturbances. Several experimental results are
presented and analyzed in order to show this control systems
performance.
2. Adaptive controller design
In this section, an adaptive posture-control law and an
adaptive heading-control law are developed for a robotic
wheelchair (see Fig. 1), taking into account constant but
unknown model parameters. In Fig. 2, the block diagram of the
control system is shown. The posture controller cannot be used
when the position error is very small, because it uses polar
coordinates of the vehicle. Therefore the heading controller is
used when the position error is small.

Figure 1. Schematic of the robotic wheelchair.

Figure 2. Block diagram of the control system.

First, the dynamic model of the mobile robot is presented.
Second, the adaptive control law is designed for a general
output function. Finally, an output function related to the
posture control and other output function related to the heading
control are proposed.
2.1 Dynamic model
The robotic wheelchair schematic is shown in Fig. 1,
where the point (x; y) is the interest point that defines the
vehicle position, G is the center of mass, B is the wheel
baseline center, u and are the linear and angular velocities,
is the heading of the vehicle, d, b and a are distances. Let us
consider the following dynamic model of the robotic
wheelchair [5]:
(
(
(
(
(
(
(
(

+
(
(
(
(
(
(
(
(

=
(
(
(
(
(
(

0
2
0
1
0
2
0
6
0
2
0
5
0
1
0
4 2
0
1
0
3
0
0
0
cos sin
sin cos
u
e
u
e
u
u
e
u
u
u
u
e
u
u
e
e
e
e

ref
ref
u
u
u
a u
a u
u
y
x

(1)
where
0
i
u is the i-th model parameter and u
ref
and
ref
are the
linear and angular reference velocities. Generally these
reference velocities are control signals in most commercially
available autonomous vehicles. Thus they are used as control
signals in the robotic wheelchair to maintain compatibility with
other autonomous vehicles. The equation (1) can be split in a
kinematic part (first three lines of the equation) and a dynamic
part (last two lines of the equation).
The equations of the model parameters are:
( ) ( ) 2 2 2
2 0
1
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ + =
PT DT e
a
a
rk rk I mr
k
R
u

( ) ( ) ( ) 2 2 2
2 2 2 0
2
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ + + =
PR DR z e
a
a
rdk rdk mb I r d I
k
R
u

( ) 2
0
3
=
PT
a
a
k mbr
k
R
u

( ) 1
0
4
+
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ =
PT e
a
b a
a
a
rk B
R
k k
k
R
u
(2)
( )
0
5
=
PR
a
a
dk mbr
k
R
u

( ) 1 2
0
6
+
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ =
PR e
a
b a
a
a
rk d B
R
k k
k
R
u

where m is the mass of the wheelchair including the user; I
z
is
the moment of inertia about the vertical axis located in G of the
wheelchair including the user; r is the right and left wheel
radius; k
b
is equal to the voltage constant multiplied by the gear
ratio; R
a
is the electric resistance constant; k
a
is the torque
constant multiplied by the gear ratio; I
e
and B
e
are the moment
of inertia and the viscous friction coefficient of the combined
motor rotor, gearbox, and wheel; k
PT
and k
DT
are the
proportional and derivative gains of the PD low-level linear
velocity control of the robotic wheelchair; and k
PR
and k
DR
are
the proportional and derivative gains of the PD low-level
angular velocity control of the robotic wheelchair.
As is usual in adaptive controller design [11], initially the
disturbance vector of the dynamic model is not considered, but
it is considered in a second stage. Thus, a robustness study of
the system in presence of measurement errors, noise and/or
disturbances is made in the next section.
The linear parameterization of dynamic part of (1) is [5]:
(

=
(

ref
ref
u
u
u u
e
u
e e e
e
0
2
0 0 0
0 0 0

(3)
Rearranging, it follows that
ref
C M v v = + (4)
Dynamic Adaptive Controller for Robotic Wheelchair

63
where
, ,
0
0
0
2
0
1
(

=
(

=
e
v
u
u u
M (5)
,
(

=
ref
ref
ref
u
e
v
(6)
(

+
+
=
e u e u
u e u
0
6
0
5
0
4
2 0
3
u
u
C
(7)
2.2 Closed loop equation
The output function of the model (1) is a general function
with the following structure:
( ) , , y x h h =
(8)
where h is a column vector of two elements.
Assumption 1: The temporal derivative of h has the expression
( )v , , y x N h =

(9)
where exists N
-1
and N

. The assumption 1 states required

properties for the output function. By deriving h

, it results that
N N h

+ = (10)
Rearranging the vector C the following expression can be
obtained:
( )
0
, T C e u
a
= (11)
where
(

=
e e
e
u
u
T
a
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
2
(12)
Obtaining an expression for from (10), substituting in (4)
and using (11), the inverse dynamic is obtained:
( )
ref a
T N h MN v u v = +
0 1

(13)
Let us consider the following linearization control signal:
( ) u v v

1
a ref
T N v N M + =

(14)
where u

is an estimation of the true parameter vector

0
and
M

is the estimation of matrix M. By substituting (14) in (13)

and rearranging, the result is
( ) ( ) 0
~

~
1 1
= + +

u v v
a
T h N M N h N M

(15)
where u u u

~
0
= and
M M M

~
=
. Rearranging (15), the
following equation can be obtained:
( ) 0
~

1
= +

u v T h N M

(16)
where
(

=
e e
e
u T
u T
T
0 0 0
0 0 0
22
2
11 (17)
( ) v N h N
T
T

=
(

1
22
11
(18)
Let us define the variable v as follows:
h K h K h v
~ ~
2 1
+ + =


d
,
h h h =
d
~
(19)
where h
d
defines the desired output function, and K
1
and K
2
are
positive definite diagonal matrices. Substituting (19) in (16)
and rearranging, the closed loop equation is obtained:
u
~
Y e A e
T k T
+ = (20)
where
(

=
h
h
e
T ~
~
,
(

=
1 2
0
K K
I
A
K
(21)
(

=

T M N
Y
1

0
(22)
and I is the identity matrix. From the definition of K
1
and K
2
,
matrix A
K
is Hurwitz.
2.3 Stability analysis
Let us consider that h
d
,
d
h

and
d
h

are bounded, and that
k
DT
>0, k
PT
>0, k
DR
>0 and k
PR
>0. Let us also consider the
following assumptions:
Assumption 2: N and N
-1
have bounded elements if h is
bounded.
Assumption 3: N

has bounded elements if h is bounded and

the states u and are bounded.
The assumptions 2 and 3 state required properties for the
temporal derivative of the output function (9).
Theorem 1. If assumptions 1, 2 and 3 are true and the adaptive
law is
T
T
A
Pe Y K
1

(23)
then the adaptive control law (14), (19) and (23) guarantees that
~
h 0 and
~
h

0 as t .
Proof. Let us define the following Lyapunov candidate
function:
( ) u u u
~ ~ ~
,
A
T
T
T
T T
K V + = Pe e e
(24)
where 0 > =
T
A A
K K and P = P
T
> 0 such that
Q PA P A
k
T
k
= +
,
0 > =
T
Q Q (25)
Let us take into account that A
K
is Hurwitz. Thus, if matrix
P is calculated from (25), matrix P results such that P = P
T
> 0.
By substituting (20) and (25) in the temporal derivative of V,
the following equation is obtained:
u u u

~ ~
2
~
2
A
T
T
T T
T
T
T
K Y Q V + + = Pe e e (26)
By considering that the model parameters are time-invariant
and considering the adaptive law (23), the following equation is
obtained:
T
T
A
Y K Pe
1

~

= = u u

(27)
By substituting (27) in (26), it results that
J. Med. Biol. Eng., Vol. 32 No. 1 2012

64
0 s =
T
T
T
Q V e e

(28)

Therefore V,
T
e and u
~
are bounded. Integrating (28), the
following inequalities are obtained:
( )
( ) ( )
( )
<

s
s =
}
} } }

Q
V V
dt
dt Q dt Q dt V
T
T T
T
T
min
0
2
0
2
min
0 0
0

e
e e e

(29)
with
( ) Q
min

representing the minimum eigenvalue of Q.

Therefore,
n
T
L e
2
e , i.e.
T
e is a square integrable vector
function. By considering that d
h

is bounded, then from (19) it
can be concluded that v is bounded. By considering that h
d
and
d
h

are bounded, then, h and h

are bounded, because

T
e
is
bounded. From (2), it can be seen that
0
u is bounded. By
considering that k
DT
>0, k
PT
>0, k
DR
>0 and k
PR
>0; then 0
0
1
> u
and 0
0
2
> u can be concluded from (2). The variable u

is
bounded, because u
~
and
0
u are bounded. From (9), the
following equation can be obtained:
h N

1
= v
(30)
Then, by considering assumption 2 as true, | |
T
u v e = is
bounded. From (14), by considering assumption 2 and 3 as true,
it can be concluded that
ref
= [u
ref

ref
]
T
is bounded. Therefore,
by observing (10) e (1), it can be concluded that h

is bounded.
Finally,
T
e
is bounded.
Let us consider the following function:
2
T T
T
T
e e e f = =
(31)
The integral ( )
}
t
d f
0
t t is an increasing function and bounded,
because
n
T
L e
2
e . Then the integral ( )
}
t
d f
0
t t has a limit as
t . The time derivative of (31) is
T
T
T
e e f

2 =
(32)
From (32), one can observe that f

is bounded. Therefore,
applying the Barbalat lemma f 0 as t . This implies,
from (31), that e
T
0 as t .
2.4 Projection algorithm
There is a problem to take into account with the parameter
updating law (23). From (22), it can be observed that 0

1
= u
and 0

2
= u must be avoided to compute Y. To solve this
problem, a projection algorithm [11] can be applied. The
projection algorithm used in the present work is:

> s
< >
s s
> >
< <
=
0 and

if or
0 and

if 0
0 and

if or
0 and

if or

if

i i ui
i i li
i i ui
i i li
ui i li i
i
l
l
l
l
l l
u
u
u
u
u
u

(33)
where l
ui
and l
li
are the i-th upper and lower limit, respectively,
of the i-th estimated parameter i
u

, and i

is the i-th element

of vector
T
T
A
Y K Pe
1
=
(34)
If all the estimated parameters are between its limits, the
first condition is true for all i. In this case, the adaptation law is
equal to (23). When the second condition is true, the i-th
parameter is trying to go out of its limits; that is why the
adaptation is turned off for this estimated parameter.
The projection algorithm maintains the estimated
parameters into bounded values. That is a good result, because
sometimes great overshoots in the estimated parameter
evolution could cause an undesired behavior of the control
system, such as rapid acceleration of the vehicle, as observed in
[12].
2.5 Switching strategy
The switching between an adaptation law and a
non-updating law (constant estimated parameters) is used to
avoid parameter drift. The adaptive law works as an integrator,
and consequently it can cause parameter-divergence problems
(parameter drift) in the case of measurement errors, noise or
disturbances. One method to avoid parameter drift is turning
off the adaptive law when the control error is smaller then a
limit.
The switching adaptive scheme is as follows [12]:

=
=
=

2 0
1

1
1
on
on T
T
A
C if
C if Pe Y K

(35)
The variable Con switches from 1 to 2 when V
eT
goes from
V
eT
> C
V
to V
eT
C
V
, where V
eT
is function of e
T
, and C
V
is a
positive constant. The variable C
on
switches from 2 to 1 when
V
eT
goes from V
eT
< C
V
to V
eT
C
V
. Let the function V
eT
be
T
T
T
T
V Pe e
e
=
(36)
The Lyapunov function and its temporal derivative,
corresponding to the adaptive law, are:
0
,
~ ~
where
1
~ ~
1
s =
= + =
T
T
T
A
T
V
V V V V
T
Qe e
K
e

u u
(37)
In [12], the same case is analyzed, and it is concluded that V
eT

is finally bounded. This implies that T
e
is also finally
bounded.
3. Definitions of the output function h
3.1 Definition of h for the posture control
Polar coordinates are used to define the vehicles states.
The variables e
c
,
u
and
c
in Fig. 3 are the polar coordinates of
the vehicle posture calculated from the states x, y and using
a = 0.
The control objective is to attain e
c
= 0, C so the vehicle
will attain the origin of the reference coordinate <g> and the
heading of the x
g
-axis of this coordinate. The function h must
be defined such that the convergence of h to h
d
implies the
convergence of the polar coordinates to zero. The desired
output function equal to zero (h
d
= 0) is used for simplification.
Let h be as follows:
Dynamic Adaptive Controller for Robotic Wheelchair

65
(

+
+
=
u c
u c
e
h
| |
|
2
2
1
(38)
where
1
and
2
are real constants greater than zero. This h
function complies with the previously presented requisite:
when h converges to zero, the polar coordinates e
c
,
u
and
c

converge to zero. Now it is necessary to prove that this function
allows the positive verification of the assumptions made in the
adaptive controller design; this is performed in the following
paragraphs.

Figure 3. Unicycle-like mobile robot in polar coordinates; <g> is a
fixed reference coordinate.

The temporal derivatives of these coordinates, considering
the reference coordinate <g> as fixed, are
c
u
c
c
u
u
u c
e
u
e
u
u e
|
|
|
e |
|
sin
sin
cos
=
+ =
=

(39)
By deriving h on time, the variable N of equation (9) is
obtained:
( )
(
(

+
+
=
1
sin
1
2 2 cos
2
1
c
u
u u u
e
N
|

| o |
(40)
where
c
u
u u
e
|
| o
sin
=
(41)
The inverse of N is
( ) ( )
( )
( ) ( )
(
(

+
+

=

N N e
N N
N u u
c
u
u
det
2 cos
det
sin
1
det 2 det 1
1
2
1
o | |

|
(42)
where
( )
u u
N | o cos 2 det
1 2
+ =
(43)
A sufficient condition for the equation (43) be not null is
that
2 t | s
u
. The assumptions 1, 2 and 3 are true
2 t | s
u
and e
c
> 0. Then, choosing h
d
= 0, 0 =
d
h

and
0 =
d
h

, the adaptive control law guarantees that h 0 and
0 h

as t .
A further analysis can be made over the function h. When
the second element of h, i.e. h
2
=
2

c
+
u
, is converging to
zero, then the sign of
u
tends to be the opposite sign of
c
. As a
consequence, the vehicle goes around the origin of <g>
decreasing
c
(see Fig. 4). Remark. When e
c
is small, the
execution of the posture control can cause control problems
because the control system is close to a singular case, i.e. a
state that e
c
= 0. Besides, the calculation of
c
and
u
is very
sensitive to noise. Thus the controller must be turned off when
e
c
is less than a small boundary.

Figure 4. Example of the situation when h
2
is close to zero in the
posture control.
3.2 Definition of h for the heading control
In this case, the control objective is to obtain a
convergence of the heading of the vehicle to the orientation of
the x
g
-axis of the reference coordinate <g> (see Fig. 3) and
obtain a stable or bounded characteristic of the vehicle position.
Let h be as follows:
(

+
=
g
g g g g
y x

sin cos
h (44)
where
x
g,
y
g and

g are the position and heading of the vehicle

expressed in <g> coordinates using parameter a = 0 (see
Fig. 3). The temporal derivatives of these variables, considering
the reference coordinate <g> as fixed, are
e

=
=
=
g
g g
g g
u y
u x

sin
cos
(45)
The following position error
e
p is defined to analyze the
relation between the position error and the first element of h.
2 2
g g p
y x e + = (46)
The temporal derivative of
e
p is
g g g g p
u y u x e sin 2 cos 2 + = (47)
that results in
1
2uh e
p
= (48)
J. Med. Biol. Eng., Vol. 32 No. 1 2012

66
The boundedness of u and h
1
was stated in the subsection
2.3 if assumptions 1 and 2 are true. That such assumptions are
positive is verified further in the next paragraph. Therefore,
p
e
is bounded. Furthermore, it can be obtained that the
inequality
( )
1
sup 2 h u e
p
s
, where sup (u) is the supreme of u,
implies that p
e
converges to zero when h
1
converges to zero.
This conclusion is not enough to conclude that e
p
converges to
a finite value. Unfortunately, the relation between u and h
1

involves the dynamic and parameter errors of the robot that
make it difficult to establish whether p
e
is a negative function.
However, e
p
varies more slowly as time passes. In the worst
case, e
p
may be increased considerably over a long time. In
order to avoid e
p
is greater than a considerable value, the
controller has to be turned off after a short time, but long
enough to attain a very small heading error. Considering that
p
e
is bounded, e
p
is bounded if the controller is turned off
after a finite time. If h
1
0 as t , then the scalar product
of the vector [x
g
y
g
]
T
by the unitary vector of the vehicle
heading converges to zero t . Therefore, either e
p
is
decreasing or the orientation is tending to be perpendicular to
the vector [x
g
y
g
]
T
. In the experimental results (section 4) one
can see that e
p
tends to decrease and no divergence of e
p
is
observed.
By deriving h on time, the variable N of the equation (9)
is obtained:
(

=
1 0
sin cos 1
g g g g
x y
N

(49)
The matrix N
-1
is
(

+
=

1 0
sin cos 1
1 g g g g
x y
N

(50)
The assumptions 1, 2 and 3 are true if x
g
and y
g
are
bounded; such conditions can be guaranteed if the controller is
turned off after a finite time. Therefore, choosing h
d
= 0,
0 =
d
h

and
0 =
d
h

, the adaptive control law guarantees that
h
d
0 and 0
d
h

as t . Thus, according to (44),

h
d
0 as t .
4. Results
The experiments were performed with a robotic
wheelchair (see Fig. 5). The hardware architecture of the
robotic wheelchair consisted of: (1) a commercial powered
wheelchair from which only the mechanical structure and
motors were used, as the power card and joystick were
discarded; (2) two encoders directly connected to the motors;
(3) a Texas Instruments MSP430F1611 microcontroller with
the low-level velocity control implemented; (4) a power card
that amplified PWM signals obtained from the microcontroller
and sent them to the motors; (5) a computer where the
high-level control algorithms were implemented. The
high-level control algorithms were implemented under the
Windows operating system using Microsoft Visual C++.
It is assumed that the desired posture selection has been
performed over a finite number of predefined desired postures
by using a human-machine interface based on brain signals,
head movements, eye blinks or eye movements. The available
predefined desired postures are the postures in which distance
from the current location of the wheelchair is less than a
predefined distance. The number of desired postures is
restricted in this way because greater distances of the
wheelchair from the desired postures mean greater control
actions, which implies greater velocities and accelerations.
Therefore, it is assumed that the user guided the wheelchair
using the human-machine interface until it reached a position
closer to the desired posture. Then the user selected the
available predefined posture, and finally activated the
automatic posture controller to reach the desired position. The
following experiments show only the execution of the last step,
which is the automatic posture control.

Figure 5. Robotic wheelchair.

The posture control was executed in two stages. In the first
stage, the posture control was performed until e
c
<0.1m. After
the first stage, possibly, the heading error was still large. To
solve this problem, the heading control was performed in the
second stage. In the case that the initial position error e
c
is less
than 0.1 m, only the heading control was used.
The estimated model parameters were initialized with the
identified parameters of the robotic wheelchair with a user of
62 kg. The identifications were performed by using least squares
estimation [13] applied to a filtered regression model [14]
obtained from (3). The filtered regression model is used to avoid
measuring accelerations that are present in the regression model
(3). To obtain a filtered regression model, the equation (3) is
filtered on both sides by the filter
( ) ( )
R R R
s s f + = (51)
where
R
is a real positive constant.
By performing the least squares estimation using the
filtered regression model, the parameters
0
i
u are identified
(see [13] for details). The identified parameters are
8767 . 0 0065 . 0 0023 . 1
0045 . 0 2043 . 0 4214 . 0
0
6
0
5
0
4
0
3
0
2
0
1
= = =
= = =
u u u
u u u
(52)
Dynamic Adaptive Controller for Robotic Wheelchair

67
It is worthwhile to mention that these model parameters
where identified only to initialize the estimated model
parameters of the adaptive posture controller and not for
simulation purposes. All the experiments were performed in the
real robotic wheelchair with a user of 62 kg.
The parameters of the switching adaptive posture control
are:
( )
( )
( )
005 . 0
2 . 1 , 03 . 0 2 . 1 , 8 . 0
03 . 0 , 8 . 0 , 7 . 0 , 14 . 0
1 , 2
48 . 0 , 6 . 9 , 8 . 4 , 960 , 384 , 384 diag
5 . 0 , 5 . 0 diag
5 . 0 2 , 5 . 0 2 diag
6 5 4 6
5 4 2 1
2 1
2
1
=
= = = =
= = = =
= =
=
=
=
v
u u u l
l l l l
A
C
l l l l
l l l l
K
K
K


The parameters of the switching adaptive heading control
are:
( )
( )
( )
005 . 0
2 . 1 , 03 . 0 2 . 1 , 8 . 0
03 . 0 , 8 . 0 , 7 . 0 , 14 . 0
48 . 0 , 6 . 9 , 8 . 4 , 960 , 384 , 384 diag
1 , 1 diag
2 , 2 diag
6 5 4 6
5 4 2 1
2
1
=
= = = =
= = = =
=
=
=
v
u u u l
l l l l
A
C
l l l l
l l l l
K
K
K

The second time derivative of the output, which is
necessary in the adaptive law, can be estimated by filtering the
velocity measures with a Kalman filter. The experimental
results are shown in Figs. 6-8. The objective is to reach the
posture (0.5, 0.7, 3/4). The traced trajectory by the robotic
wheelchair shows that it goes to the desired position and
simultaneously orientates. One can observe that the control
errors converge to zero and the estimated model parameters do
not diverge.

Figure 6. Robotic wheelchair trajectory.

In Fig. 9, experimental results when using other desired
postures and other control gains are shown. The gain
1

multiplies the position error e
c
in the posture output function
(38). Therefore, when this gain is decreased, the position error
convergence decreases in importance with respect to
u

convergence. This case can be seen in Fig. 9 comparing the red
and green lines, where the green line is the experimental result
when a less
1
is used. The corresponding error evolutions to
these results are shown in Figs. 10-12.

Figure 7. Time evolution of errors when the desired posture is (0.l5, 0.7,
3/4).

Figure 8. Time evolution of the estimated parameters.

Figure 9. Robotic wheelchair trajectory comparison.
J. Med. Biol. Eng., Vol. 32 No. 1 2012

68

Figure 10. Time evolution of errors when desired posture is (0.5, 0.7, 0)
and
1
=2 and
2
=1.

Figure 11. Time evolution of errors when desired posture is (0.5, 0.7, 0)
and
1
=1 and
2
=1.

Figure 12. Time evolution of errors when the desired posture is (0.5,
0.7, 0) and
1
=2 and
2
=1.5.

The gain
2
multiplies the variable
c
in the posture output
function (38). Therefore, when this gain is increased, the
variable
u
will tend to have greater values than
c
. The final
effect of this situation is a tendency to go around the desired
position (see the blue trajectory of Fig. 9).
Good posture control responses were obtained in the
experiments when the initial state satisfies
1
0
<
c
e (53)
4
0
t | <
u
(54)
2
0
t | <
c
(55)
If restriction (54) is not satisfied, the vehicle may describe
longer trajectories. If restrictions (53), (54) and (55) are not
satisfied, the actuators require high power, resulting in rapid
accelerations and high velocities. Decreasing the control gains
K1 and K2 of (19), the range of the restrictions (53) and (55)
can be increased, but the control system will have slower
convergence response.

Fig. 13. Several responses of the posture plus heading control (part 1).


Figure 14. Several responses of the posture plus heading control (part 2).

Figures 13 and 14 show several responses of the posture
plus heading control, i.e. the control performed in two stages:
posture control and then heading control. All the cases in these
experiments were performed taking into account the restrictions
(53), (54) and (55). For other cases, the following strategies can
be applied:
1. In the case that restriction (54) is not satisfied, the vehicle
must first be rotated until this restriction is satisfied.
Dynamic Adaptive Controller for Robotic Wheelchair

69
2. In the case that restriction (55) is not satisfied, an
intermediate desired posture that satisfies restriction (55) can
be used, and after the vehicle attains such posture, the
heading control can be applied.
3. The trajectory controller of [12] can be used to drive the
robotic wheelchair close to the desired position in order to
satisfy restriction (53).
5. Conclusion
Different control objectives, such as posture, heading or
position control, can be obtained according to the output vector
definition. The parameter drift problem, common in adaptive
control systems, is avoided using a switching strategy. The
dynamic model used in the adaptive control design allows a
direct implementation of the adaptive controller in a robotic
wheelchair, because the control signals are reference velocities.
Saturation of the control signals will be considered in future
works.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank to FAPES-Brazil for
financing the project (Process 39385183/2007).
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