Detect the presence or absence of human speech
How to add the Voice Activity Detection robot skill
- Load the most recent release of ARC (Get ARC).
- Press the Project tab from the top menu bar in ARC.
- Press Add Robot Skill from the button ribbon bar in ARC.
- Choose the Audio category tab.
- Press the Voice Activity Detection icon to add the robot skill to your project.
Don't have a robot yet?
Follow the Getting Started Guide to build a robot and use the Voice Activity Detection robot skill.
How to use the Voice Activity Detection robot skill
Voice Activity Detection (VAD) detects the presence or absence of human speech. This uses an advanced algorithm to detect human voice in the microphone input of the PC's default audio device. When a human voice is detected or lost, a respective script will run.Voice Detected
When voice is detected, the graph will display in green and the voice start script will execute.

Voice Not Detected
The display will be red when there is an absence of a human voice and the voice end script will execute.

Alan
For talking robots, the ServoTalk skills will estimate how long a jaw should move based on a text string's length and content. They tend not to be very accurate and often underestimate or overestimate the time it takes for the Text-to-speech app to run. I thought this skill could help circumvent this limitation by keeping an ear open for when the audio starts and ends. I also thought of adding some natural neck animation while my robot speaks.
The problem is that I have no way to trigger my 'stay alive' script when the audio begins and stop it when text to speech ends.
This skill almost got me there, then I realized it worked only with the mic input. A check box that switches what it listens too from MIC to LINE OUT would be super cool!