Exploring robot speech recognition with NLP

This is going to be a rather involved chapter, but all of the concepts are fairly easy to understand. We will end up with a very strong framework to build voice recognition and commands upon. Not only will you get a voice-based command system for a robot, but also a full-featured digital assistant that tells jokes. Let’s first quickly introduce NLP.

Briefly introducing the NLP concept

NLP is not just converting sound waves to written words (speech to text, or STT), but also understanding what those words mean. We don’t want to just have some rigid, pre-programmed spoken commands, but some ability for the robot to respond to human speech.

We will be using two different forms of STT processing:

• Spectrum analysis: This type helps to detect when you say the robot’s name. This technique recognizes words or phrases by sampling which frequencies and amplitudes make up the word. This process has the advantage...