Language can become a barrier for humans and robots when trying to communicate. The robot will have the ability to produce sounds in order to communicate with people, animals and other robots.
When I first started exploring ways to add speech to my robotics projects I was using a small FM transmitter to send audio to the robot. However, it can probably be agreed that just sticking a radio in the robot isn’t that cool. Instead we are going to look at a few of the different software and hardware required make this conversion.
We are going to set up a dedicated speech processor that will receive text data from the robot’s main computer which it will then process into audio signals that can be understood as words. The following options list various pros and cons for available solutions that can handle speech synthesis on either the hardware or software level.
Pros
Cons
Pros
espeak package.Cons
Pros
Cons
An amplifier will be required in either case to amplify the audio you generate for output through speakers.
A hexapedal robot named Genghis was revealed by MIT in 1989. Genghis was famous for being made quickly and cheaply due to construction methods; Genghis used 4 microprocessors, 22 sensors, and 12 servo motors. Rodney Brooks and Anita M. Flynn published “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of The Solar System”. The paper advocated creating smaller cheaper robots in greater numbers to increase production time and decrease the difficulty of launching robots into space.
https://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/fast-cheap.pdf
An endoskeleton is an internal support structure of an animal, composed of mineralized tissue.
Endoskeleton develops within the skin or in the deeper body tissues. The vertebrate is basically an endoskeleton made up of two types of tissues (bone and cartilage). During early embryonic development the endoskeleton is composed of notochord and cartilage. The notochord in most vertebrates is replaced by vertebral column and cartilage is replaced by bone in most adults.In three phyla and one subclass of animals, endoskeletons of various complexity are found: Chordata, Echinodermata, Porifera, and Coleoidea. An endoskeleton may function purely for support (as in the case of sponges), but often serves as an attachment site for muscle and a mechanism for transmitting muscular forces. A true endoskeleton is derived from mesodermal tissue. Such a skeleton is present in echinoderms and chordates. The poriferan ‘skeleton’ consists of microscopic calcareous or siliceous spicules or a spongin network. The Coleoidae do not have a true endoskeleton in the evolutionary sense; here, a mollusk exoskeleton evolved into several sorts of internal structure, the “cuttlebone” of cuttlefish being the best-known version. Yet they do have cartilaginous tissue in their body, even if it is not mineralized, especially in the head, where it forms a primitive cranium.The endoskeleton gives shape, support and protection to the body and provides a means of locomotion.
I like to encourage developers and engineers to open source their robotics projects when possible. Obviously the nature of intellectual property and ownership does not always permit this, and there is still a great amount of proprietary software that many businesses rely on which cannot be open sourced.
However, all is not lost. There is many alternatives that make it possible to leverage the advantages of open source software while avoiding releasing proprietary code. As usual in development, abstraction is the key. Instead of releasing the entire sum of a project, try modularizing the codebase into one or more abstract library that can be released. The added advantage here is that the process of modularizing your codebase will significantly improve the readability and maintainability of your code.
There are a significant number of benefits to open sourcing a useful package or library. Aside from the possibility of allowing a community of other developers to double check your work and possibly improve it, an open source project can become a significant way for a single developer or a company to establish and maintain reputability.