Xenarc Technologies Rugged LCD Monitors integrated into Lurch - The Autonomous Wheel Chair

Politecnico Di Milano Institute of artificial intelligence in Italy used a Xenarc Technologies 700TSV 7" Rugged Monitor for their Research and Development of LURCH - The autonomous wheelchair and other numerous robotic projects.
Established in 1971, the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory at Politecnico di Milano (AIRLab) is one of the longest-standing research groups in Italy working on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Machine Perception.
AIRLab’s theoretical and applied research covers a wide spectrum of topics. Many AIRLab projects are funded either by European or national agencies or by companies.  Given the pervasiveness of these topics, AIRLab researches involve multi-disciplinary collaborations with many teams both within Politecnico and at International level.
AIRLab is active in the European robotics community, participates to the euRobotics AISBL and is among the organisers of the European Robotics League.
Learn More about LURCH: http://airwiki.elet.polimi.it/index.php/LURCH_-_The_autonomous_wheelchair

Personal Mobility Kit

The PMK is an add-on for commercial electric wheelchairs that uses robotic technology to provide two new functionalities:

• autonomous driving, where the user only has to select her goal and the PMK drives the wheelchair safely to destination;
• assisted driving, where the user is in charge of driving and the PMK only intervenes to ensure safety (e.g., slowing down to avoid a collision with a child jumping in front of the wheelchair) or provide help in difficult maneuvers (e.g., while approaching doorways).

The PMK has been developed with the collaboration of disabled people. Its design and implementation are focused on the principle of shared autonomy: the robotic part of the wheelchair only intervenes when this actually makes the user feel more empowered by this intervention, augmenting the user’s autonomy and independence.
Learn More: https://phys.org/news/2009-03-thought-propelled-wheelchair-italy.html



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L.U.R.C.H. is the acronym of "Let Unleashed Robots Crawl the House" and beside the intentional reminder to the Addam's family character it is the autonomous wheelchair developed at the AIRLab. Its name for "official" settings is RBWC (RoBy WheelChair).
LURCH is an extended version of an commercial electric wheelchair (Rabbit by OttoBock) equipped with:

1. An interface circuit for digital drive via a radio serial link (XBee modules)
2. Two on-board computers (PCBricks), powered by wheelchair batteries
3. A 7-inch touchscreen monitor (Xenarc 700TSV), 800x480 resolution (16:10 AR)
4. Two laser scanners Hokuyo URG 04LX
5. A colour camera FireI400 (resolution 640×480)
6. An odometry system based on encoders applied to the rear wheels

Main goals of the LURCH project are:

1. Add sensors and robotic functionalities to the powered wheelchair.
2. Add various command interfaces, such as Joypad wireless, speech command, facial muscle control, brain-computer interface.
3. Semi-autonomous navigation with collision and obstacle avoidance.
4. Autonomous navigation by path planning and localization.

Functions currently provided by LURCH:

1. Driving by the original joystick or a Logitech RumblePad2 wireless joypad.
2. Obstacle sensing using planar scanner lasers.
3. Basic collision and obstacle avoidance behaviours.
4. Indoor localization by a fiducial marker system
5. Path planning and basic autonomous navigation.
6. Brain-computer interface driving system