Voice Control System for Ship Operation and Work Support
A voice control system for ship operation and work support has been developed by Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. This system is a device which has been designed to save labor and manpower by allowing the operation of steering equipment, winches, and other types of appliances to be controlled by voice.
The description of the system provided here is for system used in operating a winch used for observation on a fishery research ship. By adopting this system, the winding up and unwinding of the wire and stopping such operations becomes possible by means of voice control of the lever operation as shown in figure 1. The system can be in- stalled in addition to the existing manually operated lever. Photograph 1 shows the status of the lever drive device fitted to the handling lever of the winch.
The main devices comprising this system consist of voice control equipment, a lever control device, a condition display board, and remote control equipment. The voice control equipment, which is the heart of the system, is roughly divided into two parts, the recognition part that recognizes voice input by means of a throat micro- phone and the control part which outputs operation orders based on the results of recognition.
The operation of the winch using this system is done in accordance with the following steps. The user of this system, however, needs to record and perform dictionary registration in advance.
(1) Input the voice command as registered in advance with the throal microphone.
(2) After inputting the voice command, the recognition result output is delivered through the speaker unit by means of composite sounds.
(3) In one or two seconds, the handling lever is activated based on the results of recognition.
(4) In case of an erroneous recognition, the voice command is input once again through the throat microphone within one or two seconds.
(5) To cope with any difficulties with the recognition function, it is possible to set the handling lever at the stop position by calling out in a loud voice through a back up system.
This system can be used extensively to support the operation of marine and land machinery and equipment, easy operation of the calculator monitoring equipment, and the like.
