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Change Release Notes
There has been a lot of talk recently about adding conversational A.I. to your robot. Many years ago, I created a learning A.I. called Synthia. I appreciate the interest in Synthia, however she'd require a bit of work to go public. So, a few of you have mentioned PandoraBots - which is an online bot hosting service.
This release introduces a PandoraBot Control, found under the Speech category when adding controls. Please use the ? to read details on how this control works, and the issues with speech recognition. There is also an Example Project you may load to review functionality.
If you create your own Bot, you may also add speech commands that are specific to your robot. If you review the example that I had included, you will notice that "Move servo Left" will execute EZ-Script. Any response that includes EZ-Script can be surrounded by [ and ]. The help page will explain more
- New Control: PandoraBot Artificial Intelligence

This release introduces a PandoraBot Control, found under the Speech category when adding controls. Please use the ? to read details on how this control works, and the issues with speech recognition. There is also an Example Project you may load to review functionality.
If you create your own Bot, you may also add speech commands that are specific to your robot. If you review the example that I had included, you will notice that "Move servo Left" will execute EZ-Script. Any response that includes EZ-Script can be surrounded by [ and ]. The help page will explain more
- New Control: PandoraBot Artificial Intelligence

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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
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.
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.
Alan
Alan
Google for tips on improving accuracy of speech recognition.
It is not cheap though...
Training the built in recognition on Windows 7 is still pretty good with no added cost.
Alan
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
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.
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
ADREA USB-SA MICROPHONE POD
ADREA USB-SA MICROPHONE SET
AMAZON HAS THEM,PLUS THEY SELL MANY MORE HIGH GRADE MICROPHONES
That second link is a great price for an array microphone. How far away can you be and still get good sound pickup?
Alan
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
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
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
ALan
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