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Asked — Edited

Cortana Speech Recognition Integration With ARC

We have managed to integrate Cortana unlimited (same as dictation mode) speech recognition with ARC which now means we can input any speech into ARC (for no cost unlike Dragon). we are using the HTTP custom server as can be seen on the screendump below.

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We added a Pandorabot to ARC (to use it with unlimited speech) but it always seems to use it's own (default MS) speech recognition and we can't see a way to send our speech string into the Pandorabot.

Can DJ or anyone advise how we may do this - running Pandorabot with reliable/accurate unlimited speech recognition would be very neat!

Thanks in advance for any help.

Tony


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PRO
United Kingdom
#31  
Well after a huge amount of effort we finally got something working with the cortana unlimited SR and the EZ-Robot Pandorabot. A big thanks to my genius friend Mike Hodgson whose input and help did so much to get this all working!

With cortana SR input I can say anything I want to the chatbot as this video shows - its all a bit rough though as it is one of my first (vocal) chats with DJ's Pandorabot and I could not think of what to say!



Tony
PRO
USA
#32  
Brilliant Tony! It's great to see it all working together. Amazing accuracy!
PRO
Synthiam
#33  
That recognition is very impressive! Are you releasing the module as a plugin or a standalone app? Really glad to see you got it working!
#34  
Wow, that really is fast at answering your questions, nice work!

Are you planing on sharing this information or is it going to stay private?

With EZ AI down or not released this would really be good.

Thanks for sharing your video.

Cheers
PRO
United Kingdom
#35  
DJ, glad you like - it's been fun chatting with your chatbot!

@merne - Windows 10 has made us have to jump through huge loops to even get this far, it is such early days and we need to do a lot more work before we can release anything.

I must say talking directly to a chat bot is very cool and to my way of thinking is the way to go for our robots.

I have become interested in Pandorabots because of Steve Worswick who has won the Loebner prize twice now 2013 and 2016 with his chatbots. His amazing award winning chatbot Mitsuku is all AIML and shows just how far this type of chatbot can go.

Tony
PRO
USA
#36  
I think you are right Tony, with regards to a companion, it's nice to have that kind of interaction vs just having canned question and answers. There is something natural to the flow. I downloaded the Cortana app for the iPhone, its very fast and accurate.
PRO
USA
#38  
Amazing article. I'm keen on trying out his chatbot now. I read about the Loebner Prize when doing research on Alan Turing, whom Alan ( robot) is named. I have a feeling with the explosion of AI, a winner of the contest will arise soon:)
#39  
@Toymaker
Yeah I installed window10 with their free upgrade, it is a learning curve for sure.

I used pandorabot in 2014 but it kept locking up my pc. I like how fast the response time is when you're speaking to your robot. Good luck on you success.

Cheers
#40  
Hey this is really really cool! Its still kind of tiring to have a conversation with something that does not even know what a conversation is...but the setup runs super smooth, so lets wait and see what's maybe already waiting around the next corner with the new generations of Chatbots to come!;)
#41  
So, I'm wondering and it may be impossible but..... I've not tried Chatbots but the VR accreacery seem real high with a quick interface. Is it possible to have it trigger scripts within ARC like we can now do with the VR built into Windows? I'd like to use Chatbots VR not as a conversation tool but as a trigger for EZ scripts and sound files. My robot being a reproduction of an original TV series robot, He's dependent on sound files of the voice actor who did his voice in the series (who is now deceased) to give him authenticity. I also use the VR in ARC to script motor movement and lights. I don't like the accuracy of the windows VR and this Chatbots interface looks like a great replacement. *confused*

EDIT: After thinking about it I think i'm a little off here. Seems like I need to use only the Cortana Speech Recognition to trigger the scripts and voce files and cut out the Chatbots? *confused*
PRO
United Kingdom
#42  
Dave, I am looking into this and will let you know as things develop.

Here is second quick (vocal) chat with DJ's Pandorabot, it is quite a lot of fun talking to a chatbot. The cortana SR makes one mistake in this session (it seems to rarely make mistakes) which is the word good - strange as it is such a simple word?

Next job is to start building my own Pandorabot thats geared towards the ALTAIR robots.



Tony
PRO
USA
#44  
The speed and accuracy , are what made me give up on it. But this changes things completely. I know I'm repeating myself. I'm just floored by the whole set up. Anyone here want to try and take a crack at this as a plug in or ?!
PRO
Synthiam
#46  
Because it's UWP, it's not a compatible plugin. Microsoft is removing c# functionality and removing desktop widget functionality with UWP. The contana libraey only works UWP for some reason - it's an unusual direction to take. Considering UWP is more mobile friendly, but Microsoft doesn't actually have mobile devices anymore (other than the odd automotive gps GUI). Windows has been known for desktop usage and desktop style apps etc... they can't imagine solidworks, for example, being developed with UWP...

So it's a bit confusing direction they are taking. Contana is UWP and doesn't have desktop compatible libraries.

Guess in time we will see what's up Microsoft's sleeve:) sure they have something planned that makes more sense than it does now. It's too early to tell... and we're all eager!:D
PRO
USA
#47  
ah ok now I understand. We will just have to sit and wait...see what they come up with. Hopefully the solution will give us a similar or better result than Tony has shown!
PRO
USA
#48  
Brainstorming post.

Cortana provides via cloud services:
1) Voice Commands e.g. Write an email to John saying Happy birthday.
2) Voice dictation e.g. Taking notes, writing emails (Speech To Text)
3) Natural Language Processing e.g. What's 17 minus two?

1) Custom Actions can be useful to create interactions like:
Hey Cortana switch off the lights
Hey Cortana go to the kitchen
Hey Cortana move the camera to the right.

2) Voice dictation so far only makes sense if you have Bot components like Pandora. What you do with a long text ?

3) NLP is handled by Microsoft, there is no way to feed specific content.

I see a huge potential to integrate Cortana's voice recognition with AI Bots e.g. Pandora Bots, besides custom actions what other kind of integrations can be done with ARC ?
#49  
This might be a different way to work with Cortana:
Germany
#50  
Hello Tony,
I try to emulate you for 2.5 months. Unfortunately I am not successful, the hints in this thread are not enough, I come no further. Will you ever share your speech recognition revolution with others?

Thank you for your response.

Sven