Using some readily available tools i have managed to setup voice control of almost anything that can be executed from the command line, including shell script. All the packages are free and are available for download.
A tool called PerlBox Voice provides a front end that allows the user to set a word or phrase (tested three words) that is then linked with the desired command/script, when the system “hears†the word/phrase it executes the relevant command/script. It also has text to speech ability using the Festival text to speech system, this enables the computer to talk back in response.
PerlBox listens via the Sphinx-2 speech recognition system, which is a continuous speech decoder that doesn’t require the user to train it. So far i have tested it with my own and two other very different voices, it works well though you do need to speak clearly with low background noise.
I would love to have this ability on my biped but I am trying to stay away from Desktop control. I would rather have this kind of feature on-board the biped. To me, having everything PC operated is like having wheels on the bottom of a biped’s feet and calling it walking. I’m not knocking anyone who does this sort of thing, and I plan to have remote PC processing for vision, but to have everything run on a remote PC makes the actual bot nothing more than a shell that executes commands. It’s just my personal view. Everyone has his or her own idea on how to approach any challenging problem which makes this hobby so unique and fun.
Bipeds are so interesting to me I guess because it deals with just two legs, but the problem is room for hardware goodies. My next project is most likely going to be a rover; there is more room for hardware goodies and more advanced robtics can be developed with this kind of platform.
Hexs are perhaps the best “leged” platform with room for hardware goodies as well. Weight is the only factor that has any limitations.
Got to agree with you, i too prefer a bot thats free of any kind of tether. Though i do have some fun with bots under PC control. Think of them in a different context, as slaves to the mother system, feeding her with whatever information she desires (lol).
Voice control could be interesting for a larger bot with PC power on board.
I agree PC power is a great way to do virtually anything. My dream is to some day be able to have the power of a desktop on a board that is only 3" x 2.3" able to run Windows (because I don’t know how to use any other OS) and able to run vision processing, speech, real-time coordinate navigation, etc. all onboard the bot.
With new nano devices, this day will come soon, but then there is the problem of designing and building something like this to fit your needs. For me, it looks like I am just going to have to tame down my visions and stay with what’s practical and available, not to mention what’s affordable.
Wow… I can’t believe I missed these tools. I had been looking for an open source speech program for awhile and had found nothing worthwhile. The reason is because my grandfather is sight impared and had been asking me about trying Linux (he was a hardcore Pascal and later C programmer before retiring).
Thanks at the very least for pointing me to Sphinx2 and Festival.
As far as using this for a bot, basically the issue is that speech regconition is a rather processor intensive operation. Getting enough power on a bot is not really possible with avaliable products. Even mini-ITX boards are too big for most Lynx bots. You might want to give jdpuddy an e-mail/ pm since his biped scout runs linux on a 300 Mhz Pentium III PC104 board. It might have enough processor power to run this and I’m sure being a linux guy, he will be interested.
I’m gonna download this and give it a try very soon. Probably in a remote configuration, though I don’t like the idea of a teather either. Why they don’t have a PC104 Core Duo board is beyond me, it would solve all my problems.
