Inertial-Based Control of an Electrically Assisted Pushcart

This work proposes a control strategy for an electrically assisted pushcart that reduces the effort of the user. The adopted approach exploits inertial measurements to compensate the gravity force, due to road slope, and the inertial force during acceleration maneuvers. The control system modulates the assistance taking in account different terrain surfaces, through the estimation of the road imperviousness and of the cart's payload. Different tests performed on a prototype show the advantages of the proposed control strategy.