Rex, I've been struggling with this also. I've found that mounting the mic on the robot is a problem. It will pick up the motor noise and the SR wont work well. I want to find a wireless mic that can sit away from the robot and send signals to an on board ITX. Sadly this is getting away from what we both want to do but the robot noise wont let the SR work.

How about putting some sound deafening foam ? Just a suggestion

I would really advise against any kind of remote mic (by that I mean any mic that's not within a foot of your mouth) for any kind of voice recognition. I've tried a few and so far background noise is always an issue. Currently I use the Kinect mic array which is supposed to be really good and it isn't... dictation is very poor.

I'm just about to risk losing bluetooth connection to the EZ-B by attempting to connect a PS3/phone BT headset to my PC... As far as I'm concerned this is the only low cost reliable way. (Wish me luck!..)

I have seen in "RoboCup-Home" using a long microphones of verbal orders, maybe use a gain attenuator between the microphone and the pc to suppress background noise.

I have a couple of these. They are optimized to catch both right and left side and each individual mic is removable and can be extended to have one mic on each side of your robot. Then its combined into one signal. They are Sony condenser mic about 7 dollars on eBay.

http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=221197527655&index=1&nav=SEARCH&nid=14705382811

I have these for the purpose of registering sound in a directional manor , but a Bluetooth mic is ideal like rich suggests for primary use of voice recognition. I sometimes like to do the hard things though lol.

I've been using the Blue Snowball and have had fairly good results. of course accuracy is best when it's quite It's attached to the laptop with USB and about 6 feet away from the robot.