Voice activated command and control with speech recognition over WiFi

This paper presents work conducted to date on the development of a voice activated command and control framework specifically for the control of remote devices in a ubiquitous computing environment. The prototype device is a Java controlled Lego Mindstorm robot. The research considers three different scenario configurations. A recognition grammar for command and control of the robot has been created and implemented in Java, in part in the recognition engine and in part on the robot. The physical topology involves Java at each node endpoint, that is, at the handheld PC (iPaq), the PC workstation, the Linux server and onboard the robot (including its Java based Lejos OS). Network communications is primarily WLAN with an element of IR where the robot is concerned. The speech recognition software used includes Sphinx4, Microsoft SAPI and the Java Speech API. We compare these speech technologies and present their benefits in the context of this research. For each given scenario we present and discuss the implementation challenges encountered and their corresponding solutions, including future plans to create additional grammars to extend the framework’s range of devices.