Smart Home, Support At Old Age And Support For Persons With Disabilities: Speech Processing For Control Of Energy

Generally, conventional home wiring system use simple latching switch that is being connected to the power supply for controlling electrical appliances such as fan, light, washing machine, air conditioner and television. The switch is usually located at the wall near the electrical appliance. This requires the user to move to the location of the switches to control the appliances. There is rapid increase in the number of people with special needs like the elderly and the disabled. Smart houses are considered a good alternative for the independent life of older persons and persons with disabilities. A smart home is a home that provides its residents the comfort, the convenience and the ease of operation of devices at all times, irrespective of where the resident actually is within the house. Smart Homes include devices that have automatic functions and systems that can be remotely controlled by the user. The primary objective of a smart house is to enhance comfort, energy saving, security for the residents and independent living of people at old age and people with disabilities. A low-cost prototype of a voice controlled smart home system controlling four devices by an Arduino microcontroller via a four-channel relay is presented. Voice control is one of the easiest methods to give input commands and is a more personalized form of control, since it can be adapted and customized to a particular speaker's voice. Voice recognition is a computer software program embedded in a hardware device with the ability to decode the human voice. Most voice recognition systems require “training” (also called “enrolment”) where an individual speaker reads text or isolated vocabulary into the system. The system analyses the person's specific voices and uses it to fine-tune the recognition of that person's command. Upon successful recognition of the voice command, the microcontroller drives the corresponding load with the help of the relay circuit. Voice or Speech Processing has been applied successfully for the control of the supply of energy to home appliances.