Robots are Evil · 9:15pm Jan 16th, 2013
[Long Post | Story Time | TL;DR at bottom]
Yes, I believe those cute little buckets of metal are scheming against us this very moment. Best example for my cause? Matrix. Those machines were there to destroy everything that the humans held dear to them.
Oh, hello there. I'm big, ugly and I don't like your face.
Now, why did I bring up robots in random context? Well, I'm currently fighting working on one at the moment. It came in a little box with a whole pamphlet of instructions, ranging from building the cute little bugger to programming it. As with building the robot comes complications. There was a lack of parts, rather, a part that was needed in order to rig a conveyor belt. I'm still attempting to figure that part out, which will more than likely involve Bionicle or Legos of some sort. Although, that wasn't the issue I'm facing with this aluminum bucket of wires.
It's the sensors.
The programming language the robot uses is fairly simple; it is a modified version of BASIC known as PBASIC, which was designed for this robot and others made by the company. Working out the rotation of the servos and the mini speaker was a breeze. That mini speaker may pierce ear drums with a flaming sword, but it is a wonderful indicator whether the robot is operating a certain program or not. This helps when you have no idea the robot is about to attack operate so you need not "flip the fuck out" when it does. The color sensor that a cohort in this operation ordered is fairly easy to operate as well. When you realize your mad creation can tell what colors are, it now has the ability to recognize a face. But, the robot did not have the ability to recognize speech, so we couldn't give it a dignified name. As the project involved the robot recognizing speech, we picked up a module for it to recognize speech. There is where all the problems struck.
For you rich people with an IPhone 4S or 5, Siri is a pretty amazing application when it comes to voice recognition. On the other hand, the module that I was using with the robot was not so amazing and much less expensive. It's not even in production anymore (Google "Say It" module by Parallax) and I believe I know why. It has difficulty doing the very task it was designed for, to recognize voices. One job. It had One Job. One. Flipping. Job.
Did you say something? I can't hear you unless you're using an airhorn.
The way the module would calibrate certain phrases or letters was by a two step check to establish a range of vocalization ranges to associate with a word. It worked just dandy at first, listing off words like the bomb when we were testing the module to check if it worked. After calibration was done, my partner and I moved onto basic letter formation by enunciating each letter like someone teaching a neanderthal English as we know it today. Not a single letter would register, except the phrase robot.
That egoistical robot. It can recognize its own name, but not a single other word nor letter.
Now I'm at an impasse. I either find an open-source software that is half decent at voice recognition, or change the subject matter of the project. As a result of this holdup, which has taken up a majority of January and will take up the rest of this month, I haven't had the time to do anything fun. No reading. No writing. Not even a good night's sleep has been had because of this snarky robot.
So, what should you take from reading this extremely long post? Robots are interesting to look at, but when you work on one, you hate them with a fiery passion.
Did I mention somebody's robot also caught on fire mid-class? There was a horrendous smell followed by fire. It too involved a sensor, a Bluetooth one at that. I'm going to avoid all Bluetooth appliances for a while.
I catch on fire for shits and giggles. Are you laughing yet?
TL;DR Tried to program a robot to recognize words, it laughed, said no, and lit the lab on fire.
Well, it's a tad bit better now. Our teacher found some open source software that is wonderful at recognizing voices. But, the program can be conditioned to casting certain keystrokes. It now knows how to close out of anything via the Alt+F4 combo... I'm scared