Excellent work, I'll certainly be trying that out as soon as I download and install the update.

You may have changed my mind about my Hearoid not talking with this update, it's just too good a feature not to use!

Edit: Couple of notes, which may be specific to my system. The configuration screen is full screen with only the pandorabots id and username, it just seems a little large for what's in it. Clicking on the pandorabots link on the control brought up an error "System.ArgumentException: Help URL 'www.pandorabots.com' is not valid."

It may be my system, it seems to be running a bit slow tonight but thought I would bring them to your attention anyway just in case

Other than that... awesome!

@rich naww it does same too me that error yea it will be cool for my genie. robot

dj just fix this morning lol i had update again it links to web site now

This is an awesome update cant get EZ-B to talk to my Pandorabot though does the ez-b panel need a password as well?

@winstn60 Have you "published" your bot?

Ahh I'll try that when I'm @ home after work

Thanks

Thank You, D.J.

It is nice to have a chat engine.

Here are my results so far:

sound is recognized perfectly by the speech recognition engine. But, the chatbot doesn't understand mostly what I say. I guess I have to play with the settings or something. But, the speech engine knows what I am saying. The same sentence is seen as something totally different in the pandorabot box.

weird. But, it is a start.

OK, I understand. I have to train my voice.

Training is one of two key things, the other is a damn good Mic. Without both it'll be disappointing

how can i use Pandora's bots you only speak to it and it replies back nothing about vision nor AI i ask if i can get pandoras bot response back in EZ-Script to process for AI can ARC have video AI through Pandora bots server can ARC have the cam access a folder in project where some photos are kept and it will search for each photo in video stream and report it to EZ-Script to send it to Pandora bot

Ok slightly faulty control I think. If you try and type a phrase you get an error returned 407 proxy authentication required

It recognises speech eg Heard: what is your name

but you dont get any responses back

Tried the example and my Pandorabot its nearly brilliant!

i know its confusion iam still trying set-up in the web site.

ez-robot should be easy where is that in trying to use Pandora's server who is poorly designed and there is no support for camera AI stuff like face tracking and knowing the user and more powerful color control and the ability to learn with time and text reading abilities with mood sensing to know if user is angry from his voice and video feed with good AI control and good camera tracking of every day objects not just glyphs and QR codes there should be bar-codes and text and the ability to search the web for objects he don't understand and learn from the web and from the user to make real AI to allow robots to really come to life please answer my request

Bear in mind that the Pandora Bot is not part of EZ Robots, ARC or the EZ SDK. Integration was added due to some demand for it. EZ-Robot Inc. is not affiliated with Pandora Bots in any way, if you have questions about the technical aspects of the Pandora Bots platform you would be better directing them towards the Pandora Bots website.

Pandora Bots is a great chatbot platform when set up correctly. It is made even better with the addition of being able to run script commands through the responses, therefore after some setting up it is as powerful as you need it to be.

Do not get Pandora Bots confused with ARC. The two are completely different. ARC only uses Pandora Bots for the chatbot and optional scripting support. For additional AI, colour tracking etc. you will need to set up the appropriate controls and scripts.

EZ-Robots/ARC is easy. The addition of the Pandora Bots control does not change anything. If you want simple controls for simple application ARC can still do this with minimum setting up. If you want more advanced features then you will require the EZ-Scripting or maybe even the SDK.

I urge you to explore the Pandora Bots website further and read all documentation. It can be a very powerful tool.

Also, it wouldn't be a bad thing to use some punctuation in your posts rather than one long sentence...

powerful AI isn't supported by ARC even with pandora bots. there is no powerful camera control and the AI is not powerful. robots need to be more realistic and have more AI to really have easy robotics available to every one. there should be highly-advanced easy camera tracking with powerful abilities not just color,face,motion,glyph tracking ,and no advanced face tracking only knowing that there is a face there not even knowing the user. no advanced object tracking or even any,you cannot use it to build a powerful robot with ease. there should easy AI built-in ARC to help non-programmers have intelligent robots with ease. sorry for bad grammar,my native language is not English. hope this post doesn't make any one angry

Is there any platform that is as easy to use as ARC and gives you the powerful AI out of the box that you demand, for free?

With time spent programming simple scripts you can achieve great AI with ARC. If you want more out of it then you will need to use the SDK.

ARC is not free you need to buy ez-b which is not free and ARC doesn't come with that much AI out of box all i need is to have more advanced camera tracking so advanced AI scripts could be made without of there will be no way of making AI robots camera control needs a little functions upgrade

Just no pleasing some people

@kudo48pa, can you be more specific about what you are looking for? I understand English is not your first language, but a little punctuation so we know where one sentence ends and the next starts would go a long way towards figuring out what you are trying to ask for.

Alan

OK find one for $69.

i want a little bit more of the camera control. just so that AI is possible.

Yeah, that much I got, but it isn't clear what you want the camera to do that it can't do now?

If you can explain, there is a good chance DJ will add it. We asked for QR code recognition, and he wrote it overnight. We asked for multiple color recognition, and he delivered it within two weeks. It already has face, color, and glyph tracking. So what is missing that you think it should have?

(I am not trying to say you are wrong and shouldn't want more than is there, just not clear what you are asking for).

Alan

sorry about that i am wanting the camera to be able to track and know multiple faces and know each one like a database where faces data are stored and if the cam found a new face it will run a script or ifit found an addressed face then it will make a variable with the face's name

WOW DJ thats great ,i use pandorabox before and glad to see you made a interface for it GREAT JOB

also i wanted a camera option for text so that a robot can read. and one for barcodes.

hi all, whaouu , i Did it ( don't laught i'm newbie) i créated a pandorabot account and pût the id in ez-robot, wrote a sentence and ez-jarvis good me his name. hé don't havé already a body, but he's got a Brain. thanks a lot for all that ez-robot ( DJ of course). see you soon

@kudo48pa I am wanting the same thing to track multiple faces and have a data base like with a name,so if there is person in front of the camera it will say "hi fred " it it finds a match in the data base

BE a great add-on if the ezb MASTER DJ can do it

how do you get it to speak the reply phrase? I can get it to reply correctly if i type it in the box and click send. But I thought it would speak the reply without having to do this.

kudo48pa,

Individual face recognition would be cool, if a little complex. Could be kind of slow depending on what computer you are running your robot with. OpenCV has libraries for it, so Dj would not need to write it from scratch.

Bar codes would be about as easy as qr codes. There are existing libraries Dj could tap into if there is enough demand. What is your use case? (ie, why are qr codes not good enough? Are you wanting to recognize existing barcoded objects?)

Text recognition, the best way would probably be to have a camera to PDF function, then use existing OCR software to turn it into a text file, then use the existing script file handling functions to read it.

I don't think any of your requests are impossible to achieve if Dj wants to put the time into them (which usually just requires a few of us to express interest).

They are all possible for you to write yourself if you learn Dotnet programming and then use the SDK to integrate with yoir robot.

Alan

also could speech recognition be more accurate? and having custom object tacking ,like i would put a photo for a chair in project folder ,and if camera sees it ,the camera control will run a script so i can track objects and it finds an object unknown it would run a script so the bot can ask the user about it. and some mood tracking so he will know my mood from my voice and video. not in a hurry so may be dj can write them in a year or so.

Speech recognition accuracy is dependant on the training you give Windows and the quality of your microphone. Most, if not all Windows software relies on the Windows SAPI. Visit your control panel and run through the training set up to improve accuracy. There may be third party tools to aid in increasing accuracy also but you will need to search for those.

Make sure you are using a very good microphone, ideally a headset microphone and background noise is kept to a minimum. Speak clearly. And train a lot.

The accuracy of mine is around the 85% mark, which to me isn't accurate enough for Pandora Bots. I have constantly trained my Windows for over 12 months through other software which learns as I speak, it takes payloads from XML files for all media - basically my HTPC is voice controlled and learns a lot of different phrases and words including some obscure ones like "Spartacus". Even with that much training it is still falling short by 15%. I know part of this is due to my microphone array and the background noise and am sure it would be more like a 95% accuracy with a decent headset microphone.

In short, train it, speak clearly, use a decent microphone.

Speech Reco is based on the Windows recognition engine. If you install and train a better SAPI5 compatible recognizer, like Dragon, Windows will use it and your recognition will improve.

Alan

FYI Windows 7 ships with SAPI 5.4, Windows Vista uses SAPI 5.3

Yeah, I meant Sapi 5.x, not Sapi5.

Alan

where can i download one?

It comes shipped with Windows 7 and 8. You already have the latest version if running Windows 7 or Windows 8 with all current updates.

Google for tips on improving accuracy of speech recognition.

For the very best speech recognition (at least in English, but many other languages supported, I can only speak to their English accuracy though) you would want Dragon Naturally Speaking: http://www.nuance.com/dragon/whats-new-version-12/index.htm

It is not cheap though...

Training the built in recognition on Windows 7 is still pretty good with no added cost.

Alan

I have DRAGON naturally speaking,its very good software Second on a very good microphone is andrea USB-SA its rated one of the best microphones with a microphone array and noise cancelling circuit

ALSO design special male/female filter circuit to go with it

can dj make sound control use one stereo mic and one mono: the mono for noise cancellation, and the stereo for reporting the angle of the sound. and have sound profiles so the robot can determine the sound of someone in its database ,and mood detection.

Noise cancellation is best done in hardware. Software on a PC would be too slow to consistently process, so getting a very good noise cancelling microphone would be best.

For directional recognition, you would need multiple sound cards, or USB microphones, since they appear as separate sound devices. It might be doable in software, but I still think there are probably hardware solutions that would be more accurate. Maybe @robotmaker could design a sound direction finder circuit that could send a signal to one of the EZB analog ports to indicate direction of sounds within a given (possibly adjustable?) frequency range? (ie, you might want your robot to turn to face whoever is talking, where I might want it to turn towards a dog whistle).

What do you say @robotmaker? You up for the challenge?

Alan

here is the link to andrea USB-SA pod and there is a sale to get microphone for $45 total

ADREA USB-SA MICROPHONE POD

ADREA USB-SA MICROPHONE SET AMAZON HAS THEM,PLUS THEY SELL MANY MORE HIGH GRADE MICROPHONES

@Robotmaker

That second link is a great price for an array microphone. How far away can you be and still get good sound pickup?

Alan

About 5 feet or more,havent fully tested the distance,pretty soon looking at designing a special voice tracker to go with it,simple circuit using the great EZB analog inputs and one servo for panning

Kinda like the camera tracking we have ,but for voice already bought 5 of them

Looking at a much better circuit design,andrea microphone uses a array of a few microphones in its design

MY idea is a scanning array like the larson led snanner but with microphones and a special min/max comparator circuit ,so if your voice is on the left of the robot will pick it up ,and same on the right or middle

BUT that will take a lot of designing and testing

A TON more money, but if you need more range - like 30+ feet, I have heard very good things about this:

http://store.homeseer.com/store/Acoustic-Magic-AM100-Voice-Tracker-Microphone-P26C49.aspx

(disclaimer, I know one of the people at Homeseer, and he is the one who told me how good this mic is, but other people on their forum agree).

Alan

Don't think that the Kinect mic array is any use though, just to throw this out there (I know nobody has mentioned it but I guarantee some will have thought it). It isn't the greatest when used on a PC.

ALAN most robots dont need a 30 feet range,most average rooms at 10 by 10 so well under 10 feet is good

RICH i have a few KINECTS and i agree with you,kinect nicrophone is not great at all i dont think they use any filters or noise cancelling circuits in it

I would prefer 8 feet to 5 for the best coverage, but not at 5x the price. When you finish your voice tracking design, I may give the one you recommend a try.

ALan

DJ,

Thanks for this update! I just saw it today. PANDORABOTS! Yippee! I've been building pandorabots for about 5 years now.

I'm going to try it out later with Betty9.

I need to keep up. The book I have been writing on robots has taken all my robot BUILDING time.

Thomas

PS. Do you want to put a coupon in my robot book, "I, Robot Builder"? I will have an EZ robot project in one of the chapters. It comes out in October.

Click here to see the book listed on Amazon.com