Introducing LURCH: a Shared Autonomy Robotic Wheelchair with Multimodal Interfaces

The LURCH project aims at the development of an autonomous wheelchair capable of avoiding obstacles, selflocalize and explore indoor environments in a safe way. To meet disabled people requirements, we have designed the user interface to the autonomous wheelchair in such a way that it can be simply modified and adapted to the users needs. In particular, the user has the opportunity to choose among several autonomy levels (from simple obstacle avoidance to complete autonomous navigation) and different interfaces: a classical joystick, a touch-screen, an electro miographic interface, and a brain-computer interface (BCI), i.e., a system that allows the user to convey intentions by analyzing brain signals.