Creating an Autonomous Navigation System for Wheelchairs through Reinforcement Learning

By: York University ENG 4000 Capstone Team 07

Tags: AI, ML, Reinforcement Learning, Unreal Engine, Sim-to-Real, Robotics, Accessibility

A team of Capstone students at York University built a wheelchair that learns to follow its guide through busy indoor environments. Over two semesters, they used AMD Schola and Unreal Engine to take the system from an empty simulation to a working physical prototype, teaching it to navigate through thousands of simulated interactions rather than hand-written rules.