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CMU cam and text to speech. — Parallax Forums

CMU cam and text to speech.

MasterchafedMasterchafed Posts: 12
edited 2007-02-08 19:52 in BASIC Stamp
Is it possible to use the CMU cam and the text to speech module in unison to add personality to your bot? I wanted to use the CMU cam to track a person, or just find a person if my autonomous rc car were just driving around, and if it encounters someone, I want it to greet them. I know it is more than likely possible, but the main reason i am asking, is because the CMU cam can only identify color blobs, so how would I get it to recognize more advanced features (facial or body)?

Comments

  • latigerlillylatigerlilly Posts: 114
    edited 2007-02-08 06:23
    I don't think the basic stamp 2 is sophisticated enought to apply facial recognition software to it. You could, however, use a motion sensor to sense a person and then use the text to speech to greet a person in response. Here's a project that is similar to what you are doing: http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=611413 . If you are building this robot for work and everybody at work wears a RFID, you could program your bot to detect RFID's then recognize a person based on their RFID then greet that specific person. The hospital where I work has an RFID on all employee badges to control who has access to where. All new passports have to have an RFID now, so you could program your bot to read passport RFIDs then greet a person if you are building an airport bot.

    Note: you might have to do a bit of hacking to access the passport RFID embedded info as it might be encoded....
  • MasterchafedMasterchafed Posts: 12
    edited 2007-02-08 07:21
    That sounds like an excellent idea. However, the RFID already has a code built in right? So i just get that code, and have my bot read that code, then on the text-to-speech have it say "Hello 'name'" where name depends on the code number. That would be pretty awesome. Is there any voice recognition capabilities with the basic stamp? I would like to create a simple conversation bot as well. Keep in mind, all this is going to be in my little RC car.
  • MasterchafedMasterchafed Posts: 12
    edited 2007-02-08 18:41
    Also, what is the furthest distance that the RFID reader can read from? If its not very far, then my car will only be able to see me when Im really close to it.
  • Vern GranerVern Graner Posts: 337
    edited 2007-02-08 18:56
    Masterchafed said...
    Is it possible to use the CMU cam and the text to speech module in unison to add personality to your bot? I wanted to use the CMU cam to track a person, or just find a person if my autonomous rc car were just driving around, and if it encounters someone, I want it to greet them. I know it is more than likely possible, but the main reason i am asking, is because the CMU cam can only identify color blobs, so how would I get it to recognize more advanced features (facial or body)?
    This is an ambitious project to be sure, but there might be a few issues. Identifying a face is probably outside the scope of what the CMU cam can do.

    Also, as for the RFID idea, I have one of the Parallax RFID readers and can tell you from experience that the effective range for the chip to the reader is about 8 inches max. So, that sorta rules our being able to recognize at a distance. However, it might be possible to recognise by making a robot with a "hand" with the reader in the palm. Place the round RFID tags in the palm of the person and when they "shake hands" with the robot, it would place the RFID in close enough proximity to the reader to allow successful identification.

    In many cases, you might be satisfied with creating the illusion of tracking a face. For example, use a scanning PING)) sensor or a pair of PING)) sensors at 45 degree angles out from the "head" of the robot to "look" for an audience. You could probably repurpose much of this code:

    http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=590119

    to find the "center" of the person and have the robot face the person. So, this would make it appear the robot was "seeing" the user. smile.gif Also, I'll leave you with a bit of advice from one of my favorite authors:

    Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. --Robert A. Heinlein



    yeah.gif

    Vern

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  • MasterchafedMasterchafed Posts: 12
    edited 2007-02-08 19:52
    I like that advice, always been my way of life :P Also, I was thinking of making him more of a security type bot, he will have ping sensors so that he stops when he encounters something, motion sensors to detect if it is a wall or a person, and RFID if he finds a person and the person has RFID.

    You see, since it will use emic, it will find a person, ask for RFID verification, if they don't have any, it will greet them as a "guest" or anonymous person and continue on its way, if you do have RFID it will gather the data and based on the number it will greet you as whoever the card has been assigned to. Does this sound like a good idea?

    by the way, I dont think the arm idea would work for me, all of this is going to be mounted on a rc car. :P

    Post Edited (Masterchafed) : 2/8/2007 8:08:04 PM GMT
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