Design and development of voice/tele operated intelligent mobile robot

Discusses design aspects of an intelligent vehicle such as its operation under the control of IR transceivers for improved maneuverability, tele-operation to enable remote driving in harsh and otherwise adverse situations, IR proximity sensors to provide sufficient situational awareness for collision avoidance and also voice commanded operations particularly for use in rehabilitation engineering. A set of codes corresponding to each operation including the opening and closing of grippers for holding objects are generated from the keypad and transmitted. These transmitted codes are intercepted by an FM radio receiver on the vehicle, for processing by supervisory control for the required operation to be performed. The idea of proximity sensing is based on the principle of transmitting modulated IR rays from an IR LED and on applying the reflected signal from the surrounding objects to a high precision PLL based tone decoder circuitry. The voice command operation through a language independent speaker dependent speech recognition system is performed by generating and transmitting coded signals which are picked up by the same FM radio receiver for the required operation. A speech synthesizer for better interaction with the users has also been incorporated. An innovative synchro drive feature ensures improved dead reckoning accuracy, and reduced slippage by using two sets of position encoders to measure the disbalance in speed variations of the two wheels. Some of the major applications and use, particularly in hospitals, medical centres and unaccessed situations have been highlighted.