A novel approach to adaptive Morse code recognition for disabled persons

Morse code has been shown to he a simple, speedy, low cost, and efficient a ssistive technology in rehabilitation, education, and augmentative and alte rnative communication for people with impaired hand coordination and dexter ity. A stable typing rate is strictly required though for an accurate recog nition of Morse code. This restriction is a major hindrance to disabled per sons who apply Morse code as a communication tool. Therefore, a good automa tic adaptive recognition method is needed. The new adaptive Morse code reco gnition method introduced in this paper consists of five separate processes : tone recognition, space recognition, tone_base adjustment, silent_base ad justment, and character recognition. A comparison demonstrates that the pro posed method results in a higher number of matches on test problems as comp ared to alternative methods from the literature. (C) 2000 IMACS. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.