Voice Control Module for Low Cost Local-Map Navigation Based Intelligent Wheelchair

Wheelchair usage in India is increasing rapidly due to higher ageing population, road accidents etc. In case of nuclear families, the elder people those who are unable to do their regular activities without assistance, are left alone at their home. Manual propelling is difficult for aged population for which they employ use of the motorized wheelchair, but their costs is quite high making it difficult for the middle income people to procure it. In order to overcome the above challenge, we proposed a novel wheel chair design "low cost local-mapnavigation based intelligent wheelchair". In this paper, we implemented design of voice control module for a motorized wheelchair which works based on the speech processing technique and local map navigation system. In speech processing, we employed the concept of mel - frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCCs) and mean squared error (MSE). The simulation result shows the robustness of the voice recognition module. A microphone is provided with the wheelchair, if the user utters the destination i, e, where he/she wants to go, the wheel chair automatically takes to the destination. Based on the result we ensure that the proposed wheelchair will improve the quality of life of this population and helping them in achieving their daily routine tasks with comfort.