Simple talking robot

Giving the voice to a toy always has been a dream when I was a child. There weren’t talking toys and the dream was destinated to stay a dream. With the power of the modern microcontrollers, like Arduino, to have a talking robot is one of the things that always I desidered to do. You can build a talking robot in two ways:

  • with the tex-to-speech, writing a text that the robot says
  • recording some audio files with inside the voice already recorded that the robot repeats

The text-to-speech is the best way to do a robot talking. You write a text, and he reads the text: this is the fastest way, but you need a chip that implements the text-to-speech. It is easy if your language is English, not easy if your language is different. For me, the language is the Italian and I haven’t found any cheap chip for italian text-to-speech. So I used the second method, recording the voice. The method is more complex, but at the end the result is the same. I built a simple robot, that can be made by every beginner, that does 2 things:

  • it goes around, avoiding obstacles with an ultrasound sensor
  • it talks, thanks to an audio chip

The robot is basically a toy, that fascinates my son, a little child of few months old. He enjoys to see the robot turn around, talking with robotic voice. I did it just for that.

Some details, pictures, program code here: http://robottini.altervista.org/simple-talking-robot

Talks, navigates around via ultrasound

  • CPU: Arduino 2009
  • Power source: 4x1.2V + 9V for Arduino
  • Programming language: C++
  • Sensors / input devices: SOMO 14-D
  • Target environment: indoor

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/simple-talking-robot

Bravo! Amo il Robot di

Bravo! Amo il Robot di lingua italiana (I love the Italian speaking robot)!

:-)I think a similar design

:slight_smile:

I think a similar design could be used by all the people not English native speaker.It is very difficult to find a chip for text-to-speech for languages different from English. So this is a possible low cost solution.

Hi alegiacoViewing the photo

Hi alegiaco

Viewing the photo i think that you use a URM37 ultrasound sensor, right ?

I’m also using that sensor, but when i measuring the hight level of the PWM, i always got the same value … :frowning:

Did you get the same issue when you create your code, or did it work at the first try ?

I don’t know if my sensor is not HS ?

Good luck with your projects :slight_smile:

MoX

Hi alegiacoViewing the photo

Hi alegiaco

Viewing the photo i think that you use a URM37 ultrasound sensor, right ?

I’m also using that sensor, but when i measuring the hight level of the PWM, i always got the same value … :frowning:

Did you get the same issue when you create your code, or did it work at the first try ?

I don’t know if my sensor is not HS ?

Good luck with your projects :slight_smile:

MoX

Hello yes, it is an URM37.

Hello yes, it is an URM37.  The only difficult is to wire well the URM37. You can see in the code my wiring. It works well. I used also the URM37 to drive the microservo used to go from left to right but it has too much jetter and disturbs.

Sensor is not HS? What does it means?

 

Funny one! Keep it up!

Funny one! Keep it up!

Hi alegiaco, I am sure your

Hi alegiaco,

 I am sure your son would have been all exited to see the robot, I intent to create not exactly a robot but a toy for my niece which plays the recorded music files I have on my phone as a may be a play board or keyboard. Could you help me with finding out basic hardware and other details I need to get a cheerful smile on my niece’s face.

Appreciate you in advance.

Thanks

Sid