Development of a microprocessor-based speech recognition system for a remotely operated underwater vehicle

Abstract

Development of a microprocessor-based speech recognition system for a low cost remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) is reported in this paper. The system is designed to enhance the operator-controls for the TITAN range of ROV's. The experimental system is developed on a Motorola evaluation board with a M68HC16 16-bit microcontroller. Recognition is based on the minimum Euclidean distance between the energy functions of sampled templates. The algorithm is further enhanced with the incorporation of linear predictive coding and cepstral coefficients for distance measurement. It is implemented and tested on a PC-486 system with a SoundBlaster card. Experimental results indicated that the speech-based system will simplify the operator control console but performance of the HC16 microcontroller may not be desirable when all the tasks of control, communication and speech recognition are taking place. Further research is continued to improve the algorithms and system hardware so as to achieve acceptable accuracy and efficiency