Voice controlled environment for the assistive tools and living space control

This paper describes our efforts developing the smart home environment for the assistive living. The key element of the smart environment is the ubiquitous voice user interface with several additional capabilities (such as the recognition of several gestures). This work is a further development of voice controlled devices. The presence of the commercial speech recognition engines and our experience of adapting foreign language engine to recognize Lithuanian voice commands suggested expansion of the platform including the possibilities to control various devices in the living space. The key element of the proposed platform is its universal nature, the possibility to adapt the platform for the personal needs and the economical solutions used. Platform was developed using inexpensive hardware and software elements available on the market. The field tests with several sets of voice commands used by people with motoric disabilities showed high robustness of proposed platform.