Week 10: Prototype Development and Voice Recognition Challenges

Working on the Program Prototype

This week, I focused on trying to get a prototype of the program I’m developing. I ran into several issues with Vosk and may end up switching to different speech recognition software I’ve found. The main problem was that it struggled to recognize even simple terms correctly.

Voice Recognition and Text-to-Speech Progress

Despite the issues with voice recognition, the text-to-speech functionality is working great. I was finally able to get the application to recognize the activation phrase “hey robot” and then ask for further commands. For instance, it can recognize the phrase “poke object” within a sentence like “Can you please poke those two objects over there and tell me which is softer.” However, this was just a mock-up, as I still couldn’t get the robot to move.

Another command I implemented was “reset your position,” where the system responds when the robot is in the default position. When I give the shutdown command, it responds with “Go Beavs” (our mascot) and then says “Goodbye” before shutting down the program.

Adding a Video

I recorded a video demonstrating the application’s functionality. You can watch it below:

That’s all folks! I hope you enjoyed my adventure this summer. Tune in next year for more updates.