A novel approach to adaptive Morse code recognition for disabled persons

Abstract

Morse code has been shown to be a simple, speedy, low cost, and efficient assistive technology in rehabilitation, education, and augmentative and alternative communication for people with impaired hand coordination and dexterity. A stable typing rate is strictly required though for an accurate recognition of Morse code. This restriction is a major hindrance to disabled persons who apply Morse code as a communication tool. Therefore, a good automatic adaptive recognition method is needed. The new adaptive Morse code recognition method introduced in this paper consists of five separate processes: tone recognition, space recognition, tone_base adjustment, silent_base adjustment, and character recognition. A comparison demonstrates that the proposed method results in a higher number of matches on test problems as compared to alternative methods from the literature.