About

The OpenVCIK project was carried out and accomplished under the leadership of Prof. Ramesh Balasubramanyam (www.rri.res.in/~ramesh/) at the Raman Research Institute (http://rri.res.in/), Bangalore, India.

The main goal of the project was to develop an inexpensive and freely available (open-source) voice command interface that can easily be integrated to devices such as an electric wheelchair making them voice enabled. The inexpensive and free nature of the Kit would not only mean that it is affordable by mass but also that it is available freely for developers to contribute and improvise it.

To test the Kit's prowess, it has already been tested with a electric wheelchair platform and results have been reported in the IEEE Transactions on Human-Machined Systems titled "An Open Voice Command Interface Kit", where we also talk about the software and hardware implementation details; The article is under review (see Publications section of Wiki).

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The wheelchair usability was the primary motivation which forked this project i.e. we wanted to develop a system which could be easily replicated and integrated in an electric wheelchair making patient, essentially with neck-down paralysis, command their chair via their voice making them feel more self-dependent thereby preserving their self-esteem.

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