WEEK 15, 16 & 17

COMPLETING REPORT/THESIS

For this weeks, my task was to complete the overall report/thesis to be submitted to our university. Before submitting the report, we do some checking and fixing with our supervisor and co-supervisor before the final submission is up.

There is nothing much for the progress on this week as we all have been focusing on completing the report.

The final submission date due on the 23rd November 2018, however our FYP coordinator extend the due date for some reason and we managed to complete all the report progress on time.

The new final submission for Final Report in on 30th November 2018. 

Alhamdulillah, never I ever thought I managed to complete my project within the time. This marks the last moment of me and my friends in UniKL British Malaysian Institute. 

Thank you so much to everyone that have participated in my journey upon completing this project in time. My special appreciation goes to both of my supervisor and co-supervisor, Dr Zulkhairi and Dr. Masum for the endless support and guidance to me upon completing this project. Also not to forget both of my parents for keep on supporting me in whatever form of support they can give. Alhamdulillah again for this awesome journey.

THANK YOU 

WEEK 14

INDUSTRIAL DAY - PRESENTATION DAY

On 24th October 2018, marks the day for all the FYP 2 student to present their project. Same goes to me and my friends as well. Before the day of the presentation, we all had the chance to present our pre-presentation to our supervisor, Dr. Zulkhairi and our co-supervisor, Dr. Masum. From here we know that we had the chance to improve and fix the little things as well as to prepared ourselves before the big day happen. Alhamdulillah after all the hardwork and patient, I and my friends managed to finish the project within the time. Here are some of the pictures of the Presentation Day was held.

I and My friend together under our supervisor Dr. Zulkhairi and our co-supervisor Dr. Masum
From left: Syuhadah, Nooramira, Dr. Zulkhairi, Dr Masum, Maisarah (me) and Nurul Aisyah

With my project
Title: Self-Levelling Wheelchair for Mobility Enhancement

Alhamdulillah for the best experienced of working and completing this project together with my friends and big thank you to our supervisor and co-supervisor. They both had an amazing cooperation toward us on helping and teaching us on completing our project.

Next task, will be completing our report thesis and submit it on the given date.

WEEK 13

EXPERIMENT FOR OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENT

The purpose of this experiment was to achieve the last objective of this project which is to implement the product to the real situation of the environment. The process of the experiment starting with choosing the slope or ramp and also to test at the uneven or non-smooth road to detect any slope. This experiment also required few subject to be tested on the wheelchair while the experiment was held. The experiment will required following information/measurement:

i)                    Subject’s information

ii)                  Procedure of the experiment

iii)                Data and results

iv)                Figure during the experiment

Subject's Information:

SUBJECT 1
Name	Nooramirah Binti Hanipah
Age	24 years old
Height	156 cm
Weight	44 kg
Disability	Normal
Comfort rates (out of 5)	4

SUBJECT 1
Name	Nooramirah Binti Hanipah
Age	24 years old
Height	156 cm
Weight	44 kg
Disability	Normal
Comfort rates (out of 5)	4

Data Analysis:

For this measurement length of the slope/wheelchair ramp, it is a roughly measurement according to the selected ramp we choose outside the building. According to the standard measurement of the wheelchair ramp, the preferable ramp height and inclined angle for a wheelchair need to be suitable with the condition of a wheelchair bounded. 

Example of maximum ramp height and inclined Angle

According to figure above, we can relate that the example of the measurement of the ramp that we selected for this experiment is almost the same like the example of E ramp. This is corresponded to the maximum inclination of the wheelchair’s seat when going through the slope.

Going down a slope/wheelchair ramp

Going up the slope/wheelchair ramp

At static state (beginning of the experiment)

According to 3 figure above shows that during the experiment was being held. As the condition of the slope is not smooth and a bit uneven, it will affect the reading of the sensor when the wheelchair start to move. So thus the results of the experiment will be affected too. From all of the figure shows that the position of the wheelchair’s seat has been stabilize to angle 90° which is according to the stable position of the seat a static state.

Results

With Subject and without subject:

Testing the wheelchair with subjects

Sequence of the process of the experiment with no subject going down the slope

Sequence of the process with a subject on the wheelchair going upward slope

1. Without Subject

Going upward slope	Measurement	Going downward slope
10s	Time taken for the seat to stable when on the slope	13s
18° (maximum angle of the seat)	Angle of the seat when on the slope	17° (maximum angle of the seat)
10s	Time taken for the seat to reach the stable state	10s
0.2ms-1	Velocity of the wheelchair	0.15ms-1

2. With Subject

Going upward slope		Measurement	Going downward slope
Subject 1	Subject 2	Time taken for the seat to stable when on the slope	Subject 1	Subject 2
12s	10s		10s	12s
18°	18°	Angle of the seat when on the slope	17°	17°
6s	3s	Time taken for the seat to reach the stable state	8s	4s
0.17ms-1	0.2ms-1	Velocity of the wheelchair	0.2ms-1	0.17ms-1

All above experiment were done to achieve the last objective of this experiment which was to implement the system to the real situation. Thus the project is successfully done and presentable. Next week will be the PRESENTATION DAY for all FYP 2 Students. 

WEEK 12

EXPERIMENT ON THE REDUCING THE NOISE

Through all the experiment that had been done from finding the angle of the seat until controlling the actuator motor with IMU sensor, the only problem faced is that the reading of the angle will have some noise detected from the serial monitor. This noise are also known as ‘drift’ for IMU sensor reading. This caused the reading of the angle are not accurate and precise causing the actuator motor moving even there is no movement had been done on the wheelchair. According to the previous experiment that had been done, the angle were plotted in a graphical view to see the drift effect from the reading.

Graphical Chart of the IMU reading

The solution for this problem is to add some filter to the code that controlled the IMU sensor. The additional code as below:

Additional coding for filtering the reading of the IMU

After adding the code for filtering the drift of the reading angle, the data collected are more stable and precise compared to the old reading of angle based on figure below:

Drift effect is reduced after the filter is added

Thus, the experiment is done with the additional code for reducing the drift effect which will make the actuator motor moved the wheelchair’s seat smoothly without any shaking and stabled.

WEEK 11

EXPERIMENTS ON THE SYSTEM

Experiment on finding the program to control the actuator motor using motor driver

For this part, first is to test the program on the controlling the actuator as to represent the wheelchair going through either upward slope or downward slope. The following coding is to test the functionality of the motor driver movement including the direction of the actuator motor. 

Coding for motor driver:

Coding for controlling the motor driver

According o the above figure, the coding was to test and identify the movement of the actuator motor as well to determine the condition of seat represent either going upward or downward slope. This test will be the reference for testing with the IMU sensor later. The condition of the wheelchair for this testing as below:

The seat move downward

From the above figure, the experiment were done to test the functional of the actuator motor for moving the seat of the wheelchair. This condition show the seat go downward.

The seat move upward

From figure shows that the experiment were done to test the functional of the actuator motor for moving the seat of the wheelchair. This condition show the seat go upward.

Note that the actuator motor works well with the code that had been done, so the next experiment was to test on the embed IMU sensor with the motor driver together in one program.

WEEK 10 

PROGRESS ON THE SOFTWARE PART

Before the software part is done, I have made some simple arrangement of all the controller and the motor driver into one part so that during the software progress will run smoothly. Here is some of the arrangement of the controller with the motor driver connected together and placed in one box also with the switch for turn on/off motor battery.

The blue box attached at the motor battery holder

Inside of the blue box, there are the placement of the controller and motor driver together with the switch button attach to the box too. 

Inside of the Blue Box 

Inside the box contains the Arduino Board (Microcontroller), Motor driver (to control the movement of the actuator motor) and the switch button. 

Side view of the box

At the side f the blue box, there is the cable that connect the microcontroller to the laptop.

All of the above figure describe the mechanism of how the software progress.

WEEK 9 

DATA COLLECTION FOR THE FINDING THE ANGLE

For the data collection, all the data that had been received from the Arduino IDE was then recorded. The data came out in the form of angle in degree and the time take in millisecond is shown at the serial monitor. All the data from the serial monitor is then transferred to the Excel to make a chart/graph.

Serial monitor from the Arduino IDE that shows the angle and the time taken of the 

measurement

Graph shows the angle of the seat from the IMU sensor

While for the stroke length of the actuator motor is measured by using a measuring tape placed near the stroke length of actuator motor is lengthen.

Example of how the stroke length is measured

All the above experiment setup is to find the angle of the seat and also to compare from the manual way by using the protractor and easy way by using the IMU sensor. Both method are used for this experiment to compare the result that was taken and to identify either both method can be used to take an accurate reading and measurement in the future.

The comparison had been made after getting the results from both ways. Here are some of the result obtained from the experiment:

Comparison of the result obtained

From the above table 5 shows the comparison between protractor and IMU, clearly shows that the result were slightly different from each of the results obtained. This shows that both manual and IMU ways can be used to find the angle as there are not much of different between both results.