A

MINI PROJECT PROPOSAL

on
Voice Assistant for Car Drivers

for
T.Y.B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering
Submitted to

Department of Computer Science and Engineering,

Annasaheb Dange College of Engineering & Technology,
Ashta, Sangli.
(An Autonomous Institude Affiliated to Shivaji University Kolhapur)

by

Mr.Chaitanya Sunil Patil

Mr.Sangram Popat Harihar

Under the Guidance of

Mr.D.R. Patil

Academic Year
2021-22
Abstract
In this project, we aim to develop an android based personal voice assistant for automobiles.
Inspiration for this project is taken from virtual assistants like siri, cortana, alexa, etc. This
application will be designed to provide a user-friendly interface while driving. It will be
built to handle certain pre-defined commands.User will be able to interact with the system
using verbal commands. As a personal assistant, it will be developed to assist user in tasks
such as making a call, searching on google, weather updates and navigation.The application
will be connected to an Application Programming Interface (API) at the backend in order
to provide optimal solution.
Keywords: voice assistant in car ,VPA (Virtual Personal Assistant), personal assistant
in car, In-Vehicle AI-powered voice controlled personal assistant
Contents
Abstract i

1 Introduction 2
1.1 Background and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2 Literature Survey 3

3 Problem Statement 3

4 Objectives 3

5 Scope and limitation 3

6 Proposed Work 4
6.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6.2 Software and Hardware requirements and availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

7 Schedule 5

References 5
1 Introduction
In today’s era almost all tasks are digitized. We have Smartphone in hands and it is nothing
less than having world at our finger tips. These days we aren’t even using fingers. We just
speak of the task and it is done. There exist systems where we can say Text Dad, “I’ll be
late today.” and the text is sent. That is the task of a Virtual Assistant. As the overall costs
of vehicle ownership and maintenance have been decreasing day by day, more people have
started to drive their personal vehicle. Rise of the Covid 19 pandemic has further increased
number of people using a personal vehicle instead of public transport. Thereby a large
number of people driving by themselves has created a need for personal assistant to perform
other tasks while the driver can pay attention on the road. Now, most of the affordable cars
do not come with a built-in voice assistant. Hence, we have planned to develop a personal
assistant based on android platform which is designed to be used efficiently on handheld
android devices. Personal assistant software can improve user productivity by managing
routine tasks of the user and by providing information from online sources to the user.

1.1 Background and Context

This project is based on Android application development, providing voice recognition or
personal assistant in text mode.These programs ususally include many functions and services
such as call service, email exchange, alarm, event handler, location service, music player
service, weather control, google search, wikipedia search engine, robot chat, bing translator.
Inspiration for this project comes from a popular apple application called ”Siri”. The
application is very interesting, easy to use and convenient, has a wide range of applications
and huge development potential in the real world. This application is not limited to different
generations and occupations, and can be applied to many industries that we have in the real
world. For example, voice support is very useful for personal assistants, road signs or drivers,
community assistance for people with disabilities, etc.

1.2 Purpose
This Project provides facility to use voice based commands to perform some tasks while
driving. It provides a good practice for drivers to keep their attention on important controls
and roads rather using them for secondary tasks. The purpose will be to provide such a
facility in order to reduce road mishaps happening due to distracted drivers. The project also
aims to provide comfortable and safe entertainment solution for drivers on long distances.
It will help people to perform various operations while driving a car. This is one of the
reasons why it has been selected as a project.
2 Literature Survey
1. S. Hui et al. [1] state that, this project aims to implement a voice assistant for the
Android platform while describing the difficulties and challenges that lies in this task.
They have used windows azure cloud service for processing user input. MS SQL server
is used for database handling. The web service is implemented in C#. XP software
development model was used for the application development.
2. N. Jatu [2] has used quepy and pyttsx for processing data. Quepy is a python frame-
work to transform natural language questions to queries in a database query language.
Pyttsx is a python package supporting common text-to-speech engines in almost all
operating systems. SQLite has been used to handle the database. The wake word for
this application is ’JIA’.
3. K. Damarla [3] has used various steps like speech recognition module, python back-
end, API calls, content extraction and text to speech module. The project works
on voice input and gives output through voice and displays the text on the screen.
This assistant connects with the world wide web to provide results that the user has
questioned. Natural language processing algorithm has been used to engage in com-
munication using natural human language in many forms.

Comparison of above approaches is shown in table 1.

3 Problem Statement
To develop a voice based android platform application to perform tasks while driving in
order to overcome the safety issues of drivers manually attending to such tasks.

4 Objectives
1. To setup android development software tools and create a User Interface (UI) .
2. To integrate Speech To Text (STT) API , upload the recorded input to Natural Lan-
guage Processing (NLP) API and integrate Text To Speech (TTS) API in the appli-
cation.
3. To receive the output of NLP in TTS and create android package of all the components
as a single package.
4. To perform manual testing and fine-tune the performance of the application.

5 Scope and limitation

Automation is increasing day by day and a car is not an exception for that. Many manu-
facturers like BMW and Mercedes Benz have their own car VPA to do certain tasks in their
car but most of the affordable cars don’t come with in built VPA. With help of this project,
we can offer VPA capabilities in affordable cars also.

Limitations :
1.Number of command are limited.
2.Cloud services are more expensive.
3.Android version below 5.0 will not be supported.
4.Application may not be effective in noisy or loud environments.
5.Commands will be restricted to English language .
6.No support for vehicle information is provided.

6 Proposed Work
6.1 Methodology
The control flow of this application works as shown in figure 1. User will give a voice
command after pressing ”speak” button which will be recorded as audio file by device mi-
crophone. This audio file will be converted into text by STT and sent to NLP for processing.
NLP will return an intent based on the command given by user. Based on this intent, ap-
propriate task will be performed and a response string will be passed onto the TTS. TTS
will convert this text response into audio. This audio will be played on device speaker so
that it can be heard by the user.

Figure 1: Block diagram

• 1.Setup and layout:

We need android studio for creating an application. We also need an android device
to run our android application. The device must have android version 5.0 or above.
The device must have a mic and speaker for receiving user commands and providing
response to the user. Layout will be created as shown in figure 2. It will consist of a
button to start recording command.
• 2.STT, NLP and TTS API:
TTS API will provide the text format of the voice command given by user. This API
will be integrated with the application. NLP unit is responsible for deciding the action
for the text provided by speech to text API. TTS API will convert the text reply given
by NLP to user understandable audio. All these APIs have been taken from an open
source project[4].
• 3.Implementation of model :
We pass the output of NLP to TTS for conversion to audio format. We create an APK
package for all the above listed components.
• 4.Analysis of performance :
we will perform manual testing of the application by testing the application on various
devices. Evaluation will be done by project guide, mentor and panel.
 Figure 2: UI

6.2 Software and Hardware requirements and availability

• Software : Windows10 or MacOS, Android Studio application.

• Hardware : Laptop (Processor: Ryzen 5 or Intel i5 and above, RAM :8GB minimum),
android smartphone.
• Good Internet connectivity.

7 Schedule
Figure 3 shows the project schedule for this project.

Figure 3: Project schedule

References

1 S.Hui and S.Qunying,”Intelligent voice assistant,” Bachelor Thesis, Kristianstad Uni-

versity, Kristianstad, Sweden,2012.Accessed:September 3,2021[Online].
Available: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:531796/FULLTEXT02.pdf
2 N.Jatu,”Virtual assistant,” Project Report, DTSS College of Commerce,Mumbai,India,2019.
Accessed:September 4,2021[Online].Available:
https://www.academia.edu/40229169/PROJECT REPORT ON VIRTUAL ASSIS-
TANT SUBMITTED BY NAAZNEEN JATU

3 K.Damarla, S.Daddanala, S.Javisetti and C.V.Ramaiah,”Virtual assistant using python,”

A final year project, Chalapathi Institute Of Engineering And Technology,Guntur,India,2021.
Accessed:September 5,2021[Online].
Available:https://extrudesign.com/virtual-assistant-using-pytho n/

4 https://wit.ai/

Group Members

Sr.NO Name of the Student Contact No. Email ID Signature

1 Chaitanya sunil patil 7028070850 [email protected]
2 Sangram popat harihar 7767871162 sangramharihar0072gmail.com

Date: September 13, 2022

Place: Ashta

Mr.D.R.Patil Ms. A.B. Shikalgar

GUIDE Project Coordinator

Dr.Smriti Bhandari
HoD, CSE