Wireless speed control with voice for wheelchair application

Abstract

Many disabled people usually depend on others in their daily life especially in getting from one place to another. For the wheelchair users, they need continuously someone to help them in getting the wheelchair moving. By having a wheelchair control system they become more independent. The system is a wireless wheelchair control system which employs a voice recognition system for triggering and controlling all its movements. The wheelchair responds to the voice command from its user to perform any movements functions. It integrates a microcontroller, wireless microphone, voice recognition processor, motor control interface board to move the wheelchair. By using the system, the users are able to operate the wheelchair by simply speak to the wheelchair microphone. The basic movement functions includes forward and reverse direction, left and right turns and stop. The spoken words are linked to the voice recognition processor via a wireless microphone attached closed to the user’s mouth. The wheelchair is also equipped with two infrared sensors which mounted in front and rear of the wheelchair to detect obstacles for collision avoidance function. It utilizes a PIC controller manufactured by Microchip Technology to control the system operations. It communicates with the voice recognition processor to detect word spoken and then determines the corresponding output command to drive the left and right motors. To accomplish this task, an assembly language program is written and stored in the controller’s memory. In order to recognize the spoken words, the voice recognition processor must be trained with the word spoken out by the user who is going to operate the wheelchair.