The Smart Housekeeper with Voice was inspired by a 1991 MEE Thesis titled, "Voice Activated Ambulatory and Environmental Control" completed in 1993 by Mr. Jeffrey Vogel at the University of Detroit Mercy. Mr. Vogel's solution supplied the same environmental control capability offered with the Smart Housekeeper plus a speech controlled wheelchair. Today, Smart Electronics has taken the knowledge gained from the research involved in solutions for persons with disabilities and applied it with a powerful solution that is simple to use.
When Mr. Vogel completed his research for his thesis, Verbex's 'Listen for Windows' speech recognition package was the best, most accurate solution available for continuous speech command and control. Once the development was complete with the Smart Housekeeper software, Smart Electronics once again evaluated speech recognition products on the market. More than five years later, Verbex's products still yield the best accuracy for speech activated command and control products. Because of this, Smart Electronics employs the Verbex product for it's Smart Housekeeper environmental control solution. Visit the link below to read about a recent installation.
Application Example: Heidi's Home Automation System:
The speech recognition solution must work with open air microphones:
Persons with disabilities aren't particularly fond of headsets. Also, with headsets comes wires which nobody likes to see in a comfortable environment. For this reason, we focused on making the Smart Housekeeper with Voice work reliably in an open air environment. Our customers don't see wires. They aren't faced with trying to get close to a microphone. They simply speak and their system responds. It's that simple.
The environmental control solution must respond to the user with spoken responses:
It's not always convenient to look at a computer screen when controlling your environment. Also, sometimes the things you're commanding aren't in plain sight. For this reason, we deemed it necessary to provide a creative way to respond to the user's spoken commands. The Smart Housekeeper offers the ability to play user specific .wav (Windows sound) files or synthesized speech responses to the user upon execution of commands. These features also allow personalization and customization of the solution to the user's specific needs.
Speech should be used to add to a powerful automation solution, not become it!
Smart Electronics prides themselves on being experts at environmental control solutions. Typically, environmental control is defined as automation or automatic control. We take this philosophy and apply a speech interface. That makes the focus on automation, not speech recognition. By adding speech recognition, we're able to use the features of the automation system in conjunction with speech. This allows our customers to ask their system questions like, "Is the home secure?" "Is the garage door closed?" Or, to issue commands like, "Secure the home".
If the solution doesn't work for persons with disabilities, it doesn't work!
Smart Electronics Corporation is inspired by providing solutions to persons with disabilities. Technology without a purpose is not in our philosophy. We don't do things because they're 'neat', per se. We do things that have a real purpose or application.
Definitions:
Continuous Speech: Natural speaking pattern. A continuous speech recognition system focuses on the entire phrase as opposed to each individual word. Continuous speech recognition systems work the best when employed in a command and control environment such as The Smart Housekeeper
Command and Control: Command and Control applications are applications where individual responses are executed from speech. Verbex is a command and control speech recognition engine. It's primary function is to provide control of an application rather than provide all the input required for the application. An example of a non command and control application is a dictation engine where words are typed in response to speech. Dictation engines have a much lower recognition accuracy rate when used in a command and control application such as the Smart Housekeeper.
Interactive Speech Control: Interactive Speech Control is defined as a speech recognition solution that talks back to you. The system's responses to the user will vary based on existing conditions, events, day, date, etc. The Smart Housekeeper is capable of talking back to the user based on the user's profile