Design of an Eye Gaze Tracking System for Motorized Wheelchair Control

Abstract

Motorized wheelchairs are designed to aid paraplegics. Unfortunately, these cannot be used by persons with higher degree of impairment, such as quadriplegics, they cannot move any of the body parts, the eye muscles one of the few parts that still function well. Medical devices designed to help them are very complicated, rare and expensive. A microcontroller system that enables motorized wheelchair control by eye gaze is presented. In this research three IR emitters and sensors are used to track the eye gaze. IR emitter will transmit the light over iris and reflected light will be received by IR sensors. Depending upon the intensity of reflected light falling on the sensors, the controller will understand the user intention of wheelchair movement. Now controller will take the decision of moving the wheelchair forward, left, right or backward as long as IR sensors receives the directions information from the user. The system idea simulated using Proteus software and implemented in a simple prototype; a motorized toy car instead of the wheelchair to symbolize it. Also the infrared radiation effects on the eye are discussed. This system enables the patient to move freely and independently.