General Info Page

VoiCE.JPG (15082 bytes)

General Info Page

		Why VoiCE?
		Statistically, the 1990 U.S. Census reported that there were nearly 30 million people in this country over 65 years of age. The same census also reported that over 20 million families out of 70 million had at least one member with a disability. These people represent a very large part of our society and a voice controlled entry would improve the quality of their lives and be a tremendous benefit to society in general. Various periodicals and government studies of the "baby-boom" generation indicate that the elderly population is rising each year and will continue to rise into the next century. Recognizing the significance of these trends, Congress approved the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. The disabled and elderly represent a large part of our society and the convenience and security of a voice controlled entry will improve the quality of their lives.

The Voice Controlled Entry (VoiCE) project
will integrate "robust" computer speech
recognition and automated door technology.
VoiCE will apply research on robust computer
speech recognition such as that done at the
Oregon Grad Inst. by Ronald A. Cole
(http://www.nsf.gov, 1999) and the Sphinx Project
at Carnegie Mellon University (Acero, 1993,
p.17-36). Noisy environments such as the inside
of a moving car or the exterior of a home on a
busy street require robust speech recognition.
The VoiCE, system will be speaker dependent
and will use a small vocabulary. The vocabulary
will use one word commands necessary to open,
lock, and unlock the door. The system will be
trained to these commands as spoken by specific
individuals. The system will not need to recognize
commands as spoken by random individuals.