The Wheelchair Guide

Voice Controlled Wheelchairs

With the development of the first electric wheelchair in the middle of the twentieth century, many peoples lives were greatly improved. The manual wheelchair had been popular for some time, but a number of people, many disabled veterans, did not have the physical capacity to use a manual wheelchair. This meant that they were highly reliant on nurses, caretakers, and family members for pretty much every aspect of their life, however this all changed with the advent of the electrical wheelchair.

The earliest electric wheelchairs used a joystick control that was attached to the arm of the chair. However, scientists quickly realized that there were still many people who would not be able to use this type of chair, so other methods of control quickly developed. Today, the joystick is still predominantly used, but there are also several other options that allow someone without movement of their hands to use their chair. Two professors at MIT have recently announced the development of another control system, which when fully developed should revolutionize the way electric wheelchairs are controlled.

Computer programmers have been trying to develop adequate working voice recognition software for many years, but it has traditionally been very hard to train and very unreliable. However, within the past few years the technology behind voice recognition has greatly improved and today there are several popular software programs available that allow computers to be controlled by a persons voice.

Two professors from MIT, Seth Teller and Nicholas Roy, have set out to apply voice recognition software to the mobility industry and thus far the results look very promising. The system works by first training the wheelchair, then simply issuing it simple voice commands. For example, the chairs occupant will drive the chair to their bedroom and when they are in the bedroom they will say “This is my Bed Room.” The next time they want to goto the bedroom, they can simply issue the chair a voice command and it will know what to do.

This is not the first time that a system like this has been used, but earlier methods had relied extensively upon detailed blueprints and maps. This system differs, because it uses a series of wireless access points, which are positioned around the building or area where the chair will be used. This makes it much more versatile, because it can be easily used in almost any environment.

The system has been extensively tested on MIT’s campus and recently testing has begun at a local nursing home. More than 100 residents of the nursing home are now helping iron out the bugs of these devices, which will benefit not only those in the wheelchairs, but also their caretakers.

Nokia and Microsoft are both helping to fund the development of this project. For more information, check out MIT’s news release