Tongue controlled speaking robot for paralyzed/physically handicapped persons

Tongue Drive system (TDS) is a tongue-operated unobtrusive wireless assistive technology, which can potentially provide people with severe disabilities with effective computer access and environment control. It translates users’ intentions into control commands by detecting and classifying their voluntary tongue motion utilizing a small permanent magnet, secured on the tongue, and an array of magnetic sensors mounted on a headset outside the mouth or an orthodontic brace inside.

The control system consists of Magnetic sensor and microcontroller. Microcontroller collects data from the sensor and transmits the data through the ZIGBEE transmitter. At receiver end ZIGBEE receiver receives the data and fed as input to the micro controller. The controller performs the corresponding actions i.e., Robot movement. This Project consists of two Microcontroller Units, Robot, Magnetic sensor and wireless communication through ZIGBEE technology. Robot is made up of High torque Geared DC Motors, the Motors Directions can be changed through the set of instructions given from the Magnetic sensor and the action of these Instructions is already loaded into the Microcontroller using Embedded C programming.

The ZIGBEE receiver provides the information to the microcontroller (on board computer) from ZIGBEE transmitter and the controller judges whether the instruction is right movement or left movement based on the tongue movement and controls the direction. This device is portable and this system operation is entirely driven by wireless technology.

Keywords: Arduino uno, WSN, Zigbee, Magnetic sensors.