Speech Recognition Doesn't Appear To Pause When Robot Is Speaking

MrCrispi

United Kingdom

Asked Oct 2012 — Edited Oct 2012

I was thrilled to see the new feature of "speech Recognition pausing when speaking" in a recent release, because I have quite a loud (amplified) voice on my robot and a lot of Mp3 sound triggers (over 150 in fact!) and it routinely "interupts itself" when speaking as something it is saying triggers a new Mp3 track to play - in fact it can get itself into infinite loops this way However, I am not seeing any improvement at all and was wondering whether a) this perhaps isn't actually working yet or b) the fact i am using a sparkfun MP3 trigger to hold/play the MP3 clips means that this functionality improvement doesn't work. I know the problem is in the "listening while speaking" area because if I turn the speaker right down low the problem goes away - I then just can't hear the robot any more though, which kinda defeats the point!
Any insight or experiences of others gratefully accepted

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Synthiam

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DJ Sures

PRO

Synthiam

#1 Oct 2012

The robot does not pause speech recognition when mp3 trigger or any external source is playing Audio. It pauses when speech synthesis is speaking.

jstarne1

PRO

USA

#2 Oct 2012

So is there a "pause" command that can be given whenever a mp3 sound is triggered? That in ARC or strickly sdk?

DJ Sures

PRO

Synthiam

#3 Oct 2012

Use the ControlCommand ez-script

Problem is, you won't know how long the audio is playing for on an external device.

All controls can be modified using the ControlCommand()

MrCrispi

United Kingdom

#4 Oct 2012

Hmmmm...not sure I'm following here - I assume you are suggesting a pause in listening mode for a pre-set period of time (far from ideal for me, but better than a stuttering robot), but not sure what exactly I'm pausing to acheive this, or how it could work with ControlCommand as the microphone is PC based...would you be so good as to give an example command DJ so I can follow your thoughts? Many thanks for your endless patience with us... *blush*

DJ Sures

PRO

Synthiam

#5 Oct 2012

1) Maybe if in the MP3 trigger control, i added a "pause speech for X seconds".. Would that help you?

2) Currently, you can pause speech recognition, triggering mp3, waiting X seconds, and unpausing speech recogntion again. You'd have to do that in EZ-Script right now. ControlCommand() allows you to PAUSE and UNPAUSE controls.

MrCrispi

United Kingdom

#6 Oct 2012

That would be fantastic

The ultimate answer would be to have the functionality like that for the say command where speech recognition was paused during mp3 playback, but this would greatly help as I could then trim my average Mp3 clips to roughly suit. I have put soooooo much effort into having a great robot voice that is human-realistic, it is a real shame not to be able to use it...if you do this mod, I'll upload some clips of Forbin 2 in action so you can see what he does

DJ Sures

PRO

Synthiam

#7 Oct 2012

I'll make that change and look forward to your clips

jstarne1

PRO

USA

#8 Oct 2012

Thanks dj

MrCrispi

United Kingdom

#9 Oct 2012

Not sure how you are planning on doing this DJ, but it occurred to me today that if the mp3triggerplay command was given an extra variable (alongside baud rate etc.) which was how long to pause before the next track can play, then it would be easy to measure the length of each track in milliseconds and pause it for the requisite time for each track, rather than having one default pause for all tracks. If the default was set to zero, then all those folks with mp3 tracks already setup wouldn't be inconvenienced and it would be a great addition for all those of us with loud robot voices

Dave Schulpius

PRO

USA

#10 Oct 2012

Ahh, man! I hope this fix is figured out and added. This same problem has given me tons of stress. I also have worked very hard on getting my full size B9 LIS Robot to "chat" with me. It's an amazing thing to have him answer questions and make comments to things he "hears". In fact this is the main reason why I have built my robot around the ez-b robot board. It's frustrating for him to cut off in the middle of what he's saying to start another comment and like MrCrispi says it cansometimes go on forever if I don't stop it.

I've found some success with directional microphones and placing it as far away from the robot's speakers as possible. I've thought about building a sound box with only opening pointing away from the sound source. If this can be fixed or worked around through software that would be great. For me this has been the biggest (and only) disappointment with this otherwise outstanding platform.

I understand that it's a Windows "bug" and it really sucks. You would think MS would have done something about it. I wonder if Windows 8 will be any better and how this board and ARC will work with it.

Thanks and I CAN NOT wait ,
Dave Schulpius

DJ Sures

PRO

Synthiam

#11 Oct 2012

Dave, are you using an mp3 trigger?

Because if you are using the speech synthesis, then it has been addressed. Please read the thread to see that it has been addressed for speech synthesis.

Dave Schulpius

PRO

USA

#12 Oct 2012

Yes DJ, I'm using the mp3 trigger. I've got a ton of voice files by the original actor who did the voice of the Lost in Space robot loaded on it. When it doesn't interrupt it's self, It's like having a conversation with the original robot from the old TV show. Very cool. When I read the other day that you were thinking of looking into way to keep the mic from listening while sound files played from the MP3 trigger I was jumping for joy!

I hope you can find the time and energy to address this somehow. It sounds like you and others that are smarter then me on this stff have some ideas on how to do it. Cant wait to see what you come up with.

Thanks, Dave Schulpius