1. University of Central Arkansas Methods/Final Results
Voice Recognition Robotics
Olesya Derkach, Valerii Dychok, Doga Demirel, Byungkyu Kang
Donnie Turner, Erica Sheff, Sachiko Oshio, Byungkyu Kang, Clifford Tawiah
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Sun
University of Central Arkansas
Department of Computer Science
Abstract
Equipment
Methods/Final Results
Social Implications
Robot Navigation with audio or speech sensors is an emerging area of research in various fields of robotic exploration and artificial intelligence. Robots have great importance and future in our daily life. Albeit to a lesser extent, speech controlled are capable of serving multiple purposes across a wide variety of application domains. The work presented in our paper describes a robot which can recognize voice commands, attempt to understand the command by inferring the intent of the command and responding as programmed. In order to further the research and show robot’s capabilities, more complicated commands such as dance and square were implemented. Also, several melodies were coded, so that sound can be incorporated with robot’s movements as the experiment progresses.
Equipment:
•  DFRobotShop Rover Kit – an Arduino based, track design robot.
•  VRbot Speech Recognition Module – this processes the speech and identifies the commands.
•  Xbee RF Communication Module (2x) – this creates a wireless link between the speech recognition engine and the robot.
•  Arduino Uno – this controls the speech recognition module.
•  IO Expansion Shield – this allows the Xbee module to be connected to the DFRobotShop Rover.
•  Xbee Shield – this allows the Xbee module to be connected to the Arduino Uno.
•  Male Headers – this is required to facilitate the connection between the Xbee Shield and the Arduino Uno.
•  Barrel Jack to 9V Adaptor – this allows the Arduino Uno to be powered through a 9V battery.
•  Speaker with hook-up wires – is used to play a melody.
Voice control over devices is useful in various situations.
it can be used by disabled people to control tools or machines which they have to use
voice control can make people’s lives easier since it does not require any extra work like pushing buttons to make machines move
therefore, voice controlled interaction is a promising field to do research in
Many elderly have difficulties with mobility that limit their ability to get around. They are forced to rely on canes or walkers that tends to be clumsy and difficult to store. The results from our research will assist the elderly or physically challenged to easily navigate to anywhere they wish using voice commands. This resolves the mobility problems of people who are immobile.
Methods
•  Voice controlled communication requires two IDEs to be installed:
EasyVR Commander - is required to work with EasyVR Voice Recognition module
Arduino IDE - to code robot’s moves and melodies
Following table demonstrates the full cycle of execution of command “Right”:
The initial command set along with the additional commands programmed into the VRbot speech recognition module will be covered below
•  Coding for the melodies is done in Arduino IDE, and requires some knowledge about how to play notes and timing issues. Before coding melodies, need a header file with list of notes definitions, for example
#define NOTE_B0 31
#define NOTE_C1 33
Next, iterate over the notes of the melody, calculating the note duration. Function note() will produce a sound by receiving corresponding pin number, note and duration. To quit playing melody, function noTone() is used.
Final Results
•  Initial Command Set
1.  RIGHT – made the rover turn right.
2.  LEFT – made the rover turn left.
3.  FORWARD – made the rover move forward.
4.  BACKWARD – made the rover move left.
•  Additional Commands
1.  STOP – made the rover cease all movement.
2.  SPIN – made the rover continuously perform a spin movement.
3.  SQUARE – made the rover perform a set of movements that mimicked the shape of a square.
5. DANCE – made the rover perform a predefined set of movements that mimicked a dance performance.
Step #
Procedure 1
Say “Right” to the microphone 2
Recognize the command under index 1 3
Find corresponding set of movements 4
Send characters “d” and “f” to DFRobot 5
Receive characters 6
Move right, then stop
Future Work
One of the future extensions of this project will be a merge with another autonomous robot control projects which seeks to focus on using robot navigation exploration to aid the elderly or physically challenged.
The next step is by implementing the sound, enable robot to respond to the commands, thus, enabling the people controlling the robot to have communication with it.
Among improvements, is enhancements to speech recognition system, in order to enable to recognize not only one person voice
Finally, we would include wireless communication systems to transmit voice commands wirelessly through the internet to the rover
Introduction
During the Fall 2013 semester Multimedia class students started to work on implementing voice recognition function on Arduino robot. The Arduino platform consists of a single-board microcontroller that aims to make using electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible. As a speech input device that would recognize voice commands, VRbot Speech Recognition Module was used. The project was focused solely on enabling speech recognition in a robot by using wireless communication. This semester goals include implementing more complicated movements like dancing and enabling robot to play melodies. All equipment, methods, and results will be further discussed in the following sections.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge previous semester group work on this project as well as Dr. Sun, for providing all the guidance and advising us during our work and research.
This project was partially supported by NASA EPSCoR 2012 Award # NNX13AD32A