Speech encourager for speech impaired children

A number of children who have a speech impairment caused by accident or some birth defects, benefit considerably from attending a speech therapist at an early age, typically 2-5 years old. A visit to a speech therapist occupies 1 hour per week, with instruction to the child and the child´s parents, on exercises to perform throughout the week. Understandably, young children find these exercises of little interest and do not gain the maximum benefit from them. A number of toys exist to encourage the children to practice but these tend to have limited use and are expensive. The aim of this project was to develop a low cost, flexible speech encourager that the children would be enthusiastic about using. A simple microphone is used to input sounds and words produced by the child which are then used to control a computer joystick interface. The sounds are digitised and the amplitude envelope of the signal used to recognise one of a small number of pre-programmed sounds. When a sound is recognised one of the joystick actions is performed, usually one of: up, down, left, right, fire. By enabling the sounds to be recognised to be programmed into the device under the guidance of the speech therapist, the weekly exercises can be changed over a period of time to provide the necessary practice