IoT Based Smart Assistant for Blind Person and Smart Home Using the Bengali Language

Abstract

Bengali is the seventh most spoken language, and 300 million people around the world speak in Bengali. The smart home is responsible for the digitization of modern society. This research reflects an Internet of Things (IoT) based smart solution, especially for the people who have a visual impairment along with the smart home. The proposed methodology presents a developed android application which will act as a smart assistant. The smart assistant is responsible for communicating with a blind person, browsing thoughts, and sharing ideas using the Bengali language. The proposed solution also focuses on the embodiment of IoT based blind stick. This article further assures a structural foundation of a smart home where blind persons and regular users will be able to control all the home appliances using Bengali voice command. This paper also illustrates experimental data analysis, such as transmission time calculation for GSM/GPRS and Bluetooth module, empirical coverage area calculation, a system usability scale (SUS), and data analysis of blind stick. We have found a SUS score of 84%. However, the proposed system will be beneficial and handy.

An Accessible Smart Home Based on Integrated Multimodal Interaction

“…Regarding home assistants, while many authors focused on a specific group of people, such as the elderly and/or disabled [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 43 , 63 ], our assistant is meant to be accessible to all home inhabitants, from younger to older, with or without temporary/permanent limitations. Furthermore, most works mainly aim at device control and/or home automation [ 38 , 43 , 63 , 64 , 65 ].…”

“…Only two contributions adopted a semantic approach similar to ours [ 49 , 66 ], by using an ontology, although none of them include an assistant. As for system initiative, the few examples found in the literature are limited to a single type of alert: fire alarm according to information provided by flame and temperature sensors [ 64 ]; use of a light sensor to inform the blind users about day/night [ 40 ]; alert when an intruder is detected in the context of surveillance [ 39 ]; alert when a person with dementia leaves food in the cooker longer than needed [ 37 ].…”

“…Concerning the conversational capabilities of assistants, many contributions do not provide enough details, with most only mentioning speech recognition and synthesis [ 35 , 40 , 63 ]. An outlier is the conversational assistant proposed by Salvi and coworkers [ 36 ], which relied on Google’s Dialogflow platform.…”

“…In regard to the language(s) covered by the assistants proposed in the literature, the most common is English [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 64 ]. Only a few support different languages, such as Spanish [ 43 ], Indonesian [ 63 ], or Bengali [ 40 ]. Even counting our previous work [ 1 , 27 , 28 , 51 ], European Portuguese support is quite rare.…”

“…Assistants targeting elderly/disabled people have also been proposed, including a home assistant for people with dementia relying on photo notifications [ 37 ]; the use of Google Assistant for remote control of home devices by disabled people [ 38 ]; an assistant that assists elderly and disabled people in remotely monitoring, accessing and managing home appliances, systems, and surveillance [ 39 ]; and an assistant for the blind supporting the Bengali language [ 40 ].…”