Project IRIS

The purpose of Project IRIS (Instant Response Interactive System) is to develop and test a basic, affordable automated digital assistant that can open doors and turn on lights, as well as perform other basic home tasks. The device was tested by constructing a rudimentary build, which is likely larger and more cumbersome than the final model will be, and by using 20 people to test the voice recognition functionality of the device. The device consists of several major components: a Raspberry Pi micro-computer, a microphone, and a circuit containing three LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes). In order to test the apparatus,the equipment was set up, and software was installed and modified to recognize three phrases that someone would be likely to use in a home environment. Saying the phrase correctly would result in one of three LEDs being illuminated; if all three phrases were spoken correctly, then all LEDs would be lit. The hypothesis for this experiment was that approximately 75% of the 20 people tested would successfully use the voice command feature to result in output, three different LEDs. Through the testing it was proven that the hypothesis was partially correct because the software had difficulty recognizing some accents as well as contractions.