Published July 8, 2020 © CC BY-SA

Voice recognition with Otto DIY companion Robot

Control your companion Otto robot with simple voice commands.

IntermediateFull instructions provided3 hours1,435

Voice recognition with Otto DIY companion Robot

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Otto DIY Builder Kit

Seeed Studio Grove Shield for Arduino Nano

Seeed Studio Seeeduino Nano

Seeed Studio Grove - Ultrasonic Ranger

Seeed Studio Grove - Speech Recognizer

Seeed Studio Grove - Servo

Seeed Studio Grove - Piezo Buzzer

Li-Ion Battery 100mAh

USB Cable, USB Type C Plug

Software apps and online services

Arduino IDE

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Multitool, Screwdriver

3D Printer (generic)

Story

Since the begins of robot invention, we as human always wanted them to be control or react by just talking to them. Sci-Fi movies have made that also a quite common "requirement" that you expect to see in any interactive robot. Otto has not been the exception, since we launched, community members (Otto Builders) and a lot of people have ask us, if Otto can respond to voice commands or it will... The thing is that is not a simple science to make your robot understand what you said and convert into signals, interpret and finally do certain actions, it usually require powerful processors and expensive electronics.

Just imagine it this way, can you put a big Alexa inside Otto? we already see big limitations in the proportions and technology compatibility, so is not as simple as just like: o "just do what amazon did" funny enough, what is the price of Alexa? that will be added into Otto and more importantly talking about usability, Do you want your Otto to order pizza for you? or all the other smart stuff she does?maybe at the end of the day you and me just want Otto, to be able to do the movements when you speak them.

If we address it this way then there is something we can do now and we do not have to wait for the voice recognition technology of Alexa to get cheaper or smaller, if ever does.

It took a while to research, find and even test some modules that we saw online and tried to keep it simple compatible with Arduino nano so that we did no need to change what we have done with Otto code or re-create completely, and of course something portable and independent, that we did not need to pair to a computer or cellphone. There are actually plenty options out there, but many of them were either complex, big (specially the microphone) or pretty expensive.

We found out that our friends at Seeed studio have an affordable and small speech recognition module: So with reach out at them and they like the idea a lot so they collaboratively support us with their components, (learn more about them at the end of this post). We have accepted the challenge to use voice recognition technology with #OttoDIY.

Their module use voice to interact with things around you can always be one of the most interesting things of IoT application, this is their description: we wanted to make something more different and cooler. Not everybody needs an advance smart device to build voice control project, sometimes people only need a simple solution, here we would like to introduce the first generation of grove speech recognizer to realize your dream of smart home easily and fast. So basically it line up exactly with what we needed!

Grove speech recognizer is a designed for voice control application such as smart home, smart toy, voice control robot, anything you would like to control through voice, it worth a try. The board includes a Nuvoton ISD9160, a microphone, 1 SPI flash, 1 grove connector, 1 speaker connector and 1 led to reflect to your voice.

Nuvoton ISD9160 is (SoC) Chipcorder that based on Cortex™-M0, it provides strong and economic solution for voice control applications. ISD9160 is not the only amazing thing in this grove. Let’s look at the microphone. Remember the uncomfortable moment when you have to speak directly and closely to the voice recognizer device to make sure it can hear you? It won’t happen this time! The microphone on grove-speech recognizer is Omni-directional, which means that whether a user speaks into the microphone from the front, back, left or right side, the microphone will record the signals all with equal gain.

This speech recognizer can recognize 22 pieces of commands including 'start', 'stop', 'Play music' and so on. Every time it recognizes a command, it will return a value and then the loudspeaker that connected to it will repeat the command. This value can be used to control other devices like motor, music player. We have tested it for hours to make sure it possesses a high recognition rate and a very low false trigger.

When it recognizes the awaken word, LED turn red, then you can say the command word, if it recognize the command word, LED will turn blue.

Features:

Local Voice Recognition

Very low rate of false triggering

Very low rate of false triggering

Speaker connector(JST2.0, speaker is not include)

Speaker connector(JST2.0, speaker is not include)

Built-in microphone

Built-in microphone

3.3/5V working voltage

3.3/5V working voltage

22 recognition entry

22 recognition entry

Default Baudrate: 9600

Default Baudrate: 9600

All of this for only 19.5USD. Pretty good features for the price right!?

Of course with lower cost comes lower functionalities and limitations translated into a # of specific recognition messages/commands we can use, but for a quick start into voice control and Otto is perfect. With simple programming and libraries already provided, we adapted into our Otto code and look what we did in very short time!

video with voice speech recognition control of Otto robot

We decided to make Otto entirely of Seeed studio components, to also prove how flexible is our robot design to adapt to any electronic component/feature you want to put in and test the grove connection system, that resulted into a much easier to connection of the components especially with the new shield for Arduino Nano:

You can decide what to use but the voice recognition is fundamental, then you just need to 3D print our most basic Otto, 3D files here: (https://wikifactory.com/+OttoDIY) everything fit just right inside, but of course is up to you maybe you can add to any of the remixes family members of Otto (https://wikifactory.com/+OttoDIY/projects)

And this is just the beginning.

Would you like us to continue exploring the possibilities of voice recognition or maybe Otto does not need that?

Would you have done it in a different way?

Do you have ideas or thoughts you would like to share? please comment bellow.

Schematics

Code

Voice recognition

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
#include <Otto9.h> //-- Otto Library version 9
Otto9 Otto;  //This is Otto!
#define SOFTSERIAL_RX_PIN  6
#define SOFTSERIAL_TX_PIN  7
SoftwareSerial speech(SOFTSERIAL_RX_PIN,SOFTSERIAL_TX_PIN);

//---------------------------------------------------------
//-- First step: Configure the pins where the servos are attached
/*             -------- 
              |  O  O  |
              |--------|
  RIGHT LEG 3 |        | LEFT LEG 2
               -------- 
               ||     ||
RIGHT FOOT 5 |---     ---| LEFT FOOT 4  
*/
// SERVO PINs //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
#define PIN_YL 2 //servo[0]  left leg
#define PIN_YR 3 //servo[1]  right leg
#define PIN_RL 4 //servo[2]  left foot
#define PIN_RR 5 //servo[3]  right foot
// ULTRASONIC PINs /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
#define PIN_Trigger  8  //TRIGGER pin (8)
#define PIN_Echo     9  //ECHO pin (9)
// BUZZER PIN //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
#define PIN_Buzzer  A3 //BUZZER pin (A3)

int distance; // variable to store distance read from ultrasonic range finder module
bool obstacleDetected = false; // logic state for when object detected is at the distance we set

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  speech.begin(9600);
  speech.listen(); 
  Otto.init(PIN_YL, PIN_YR, PIN_RL, PIN_RR, true, A6, PIN_Buzzer, PIN_Trigger, PIN_Echo); //Set the servo pins and ultrasonic pins and Buzzer pin
  Otto.sing(S_connection);
  Otto.home();
  delay(500);
  Otto.playGesture(OttoSuperHappy);
}

void loop(){
   int a=0;

    if(speech.available())
    {
        a = speech.read();    // Read the return value from the Speech Recognizer
        switch (a)
        {
            case 22:   // Go
            Otto.sing(S_happy_short);            
            Otto.walk(3,1000,1);
            Otto.sing(S_superHappy);
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 3:  //play music
            Otto.moonwalker(3,800,20,1);
            Otto.sing(S_superHappy);
            Otto.moonwalker(3,800,20,-1);
            Otto.sing(S_happy);
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 4:  //pause
            Otto.playGesture(OttoAngry); 
            Otto.sing(S_sad);
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 5:  //next
            Otto.crusaito(2, 1000, 20,1);
            Otto.playGesture(OttoFart);
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 6:  //previous
            Otto.playGesture(OttoConfused); 
            Otto.jitter(2, 1000, 20);
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 7:  //up
            Otto.jump(1,2000);
            Otto.updown(2, 1500, 40);
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 8:  //down
            Otto.playGesture(OttoSad);
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 16:  //left
            Otto.turn(3,1000,1);
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 17:  //right
            Otto.turn(3,1000,-1);//3 steps turning RIGHT 
            delay(1000);
            break;
            case 18:  //stop
            Otto.playGesture(OttoSleeping);
            Otto.sing(S_sleeping);
            delay(1000);
            break;     
            case 19:  //start
            Otto.playGesture(OttoVictory); 
            delay(1000);
            break;  
            case 20:  //mode 1
            Otto.sing(S_mode1);  
            delay(1000);
            break;  
            case 21:  //mode 2
            Otto.sing(S_mode2); 
            Otto.shakeLeg (1,1000,-1); 
            Otto.bend (1,1000,1); 
            delay(1000);
            break;                                                                                             
            default:
            break;
        }
    }
  }

Credits

Camilo Parra Palacio

6 projects • 209 followers

Creator and Founder of Otto DIY, a project that follows his passion for robotics, design and open source hardware.