Design and Implementation of Household Robots

• Main Authors: ChiTai Cheng, 鄭吉泰
• Other Authors: 翁慶昌
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/33871533083251081608

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 電機工程學系 === 90 === Two household robots with the feature of voice-operation are designed in this thesis. The first robot named Sophia is designed to behave as a companion of children for playing balls. The other one named Willy is designed to assist the elder and the handicapped in using electric appliances and computers. The system of each robot includes some human machine interface and a main architecture of the robot. Sophia is equipped with a notebook and some application circuits. When a human’s command is given from the voice control interface, Sophia could recognize the location of the ball, catch the ball, and put the ball in the right place by herself from the environment information caught by the CMOS CCD via USB. As for Willy, the FPGA and the 8051 are used to design this system such that it can help the disable to control the appliances, infrared-rays remote control electronic devices, and computers. Owing to the physical restrictions of persons with hand dysfunction, they are quite difficult to use a mouse and a keyboard to interact with a compute such that they have fewer chances of getting employment than other persons in today’s society. Speech is a natural communication means for human being, thus the voice-control method is included in the designed features of the Willy system for the large number of disabled people who cannot operate switches. Furthermore, Willy could allow users to control computer programs via speech by the designed software. The designed software also provides a virtual keyboard such that disabled persons can use the virtual keyboard to replace the real one. In this thesis, the two robots are designed such that they could carry out routine and repetitive tasks independently and thus help refresh the need’s self-confidence. Furthermore, the voice-operation feature is designed in robots such that it is convenience for the elder and the handicapped to control robots in wireless.