{"id":{"repo_id":"ohiolink","oai_identifier":"oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:case1365158700"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/ohiolink/oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:case1365158700","repository":{"repo_id":"ohiolink","name":"OhioLINK","base_url":"https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/oai/oai"},"display":{"title":"Driving by Speaking: Natural Language Control of Robotic Wheelchairs","abstract":"While many people use electric wheelchairs to enhance their mobility, there are groups who cannot due to age, injury, or cognitive impairment. A voice-operated smart wheelchair would greatly enhance the self-mobility of these users. This thesis presents a method to parse natural language commands into useful robotic instructions as well as control methods to navigate in a priori known and novel environments. An agglomerative algorithm was developed that uses stemmatic processing to extract meaning from natural language commands. A method for creating a navigable graph from a simplified blueprint is introduced. A MATLAB simulation was created to simulate navigation in a novel building using sensory data obtained from a virtual LIDAR. The natural language navigation control algorithms have been tested for destination-based and landmark-based navigation and perform well on simple commands.","abstract_html":"While many people use electric wheelchairs to enhance their mobility, there are groups who cannot due to age, injury, or cognitive impairment. A voice-operated smart wheelchair would greatly enhance the self-mobility of these users. This thesis presents a method to parse natural language commands into useful robotic instructions as well as control methods to navigate in a priori known and novel environments. An agglomerative algorithm was developed that uses stemmatic processing to extract meaning from natural language commands. A method for creating a navigable graph from a simplified blueprint is introduced. A MATLAB simulation was created to simulate navigation in a novel building using sensory data obtained from a virtual LIDAR. 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