Development of Voice Controlled Wheelchair for Persons with Physical Disabilities

In the current day, wheelchairs are still used to help facilitate immobile disabled people to move to places. If a person with a disability can still use their hands and arms normally, they can easily control wheelchairs by pushing the wheels. However, current wheelchairs serve as a challenge for people with limited motor capabilities and missing limbs. Therefore, the objective is to develop a voice operated wheelchair, incorporating a speech recognition system to allow users to command the wheelchair's movements verbally. The voice commands are received through a microphone and processed by an Arduino UNO R3 microcontroller to control the motor circuit. To enhance the safety of the developed wheelchair, ultrasonic sensors are installed to detect obstacles and provide an audible warning. Additionally, an emergency stop button is included. The result from the testing of the voice controlled wheelchair show that it took an average of 98.2 seconds to travel over a distance of 30 meters, and the obstacle detection -in the 50-centimeter range- had an average error rate of 12.3^%.