Automated voice based home navigation system for the elderly and the physically challenged

In this paper, we propose an Intelligent Home Navigation System (IHNS) which comprises of a wheelchair, voice module and navigation module. It can be used by an elderly or physically challenged person to move inside the home without any difficulty. It's common that the elders forget the way to the different rooms in house and the physically challenged people find it hard to move the wheel chair without external aid. By making use of IHNS, elderly and the physically challenged can go to different rooms in the house like kitchen, living room, dining room etc by just speaking a word which is predefined to that particular room. The voice of the person is detected by voice capture module which will be compared by voice recognition module with predefined voices loaded in to the system. According to the received voice, the destination is automatically understood and the wheelchair moves according to the route which is predefined. It is also equipped with obstacle avoidance technique, where the person may not be able to provide proper voices at the right time. The wheel chair can automatically navigate from one point to the other in the home as per predefined route based on the voice received. Thus the above proposed system can be used by elderly and physically challenged people in day to day life even if they are alone at home.