Hands-Free Mobility: Design and Prototyping of a Voice-Activated Wheelchair Control System

Abstract

Assistive mobility technology has undergone considerable transformation in recent decades, yet a significant proportion of end-users still depend on manually operated or joystick-guided wheelchairs that remain inaccessible to those with upper-limb or neuromuscular impairments. This paper presents the architecture, construction, and empirical evaluation of a voice-activated wheelchair platform engineered to address this gap. The proposed system is built around an ESP32 microcontroller coupled with a dedicated speech recognition module that intercepts spoken commands, resolves them against a predefined vocabulary, and translates the corresponding intent into precise motor actuation sequences. Supported directional operations include forward travel, reverse motion, left and right turning, and full stop. Safety is reinforced through a real-time ultrasonic proximity sensor that autonomously halts the vehicle upon detecting obstructions within a configurable threshold distance. A concurrent battery supervision circuit furnishes the operator with continuous charge-level feedback, mitigating the risk of unexpected power depletion during use. The resulting prototype is cost-effective, mechanically uncomplicated, and capable of restoring meaningful locomotor autonomy to users whose conditions preclude conventional manual control.