Electric Wheelchair Future Technology

Israeli students developed a simple voice controlled electric wheelchair, and posted a video that confirms its operation. They used cheap commercially available parts like hm2007 speech recognition kit and EMIC text-to-speech module. This module vocally speaks out warnings to the man on the chair.

Their initial plan was to use a cheap laptop (like Asus EEE Pc) for the speech recognition, as this would allow future upgradebility (such as a rear and side view camera, audio warning, and easier programming of the control logic) and improvement to the speech recognition software.

The cost comparison would hold, as the price difference between EEE Pc and hm2007 is small, and would not mean a big difference within price of electric wheelchair itself. Also the higher power drain should be small, compared with the wheelchair’s drain.
But their problem was speed, accuracy, and granularity of the voice recognition system, as EEE’s cpu power was not sufficient. As effect, the wheel chair speed would have to be kept very low to maintain controllability and safety…

This project has been held at ORT Hermalin (Nathanya Israel) with collaboration of the Israeli Technion Computer Science Department. More info can be found here