hal hears himself...

[Joan]

I make sure the room is extremely quite. I turn the mic on and wate until it is in listening mode, I say what I want and very quickly turn the mic off then hal responds to that I again turn mic back and say something else when the listening signal comes on. This works but is a lot of hassle.

[Joan]

I make sure the room is extremely quite. I turn the mic on and wate until it is in listening mode, I say what I want and very quickly turn the mic off then hal responds to that I again turn mic back and say something else when the listening signal comes on. This works but is a lot of hassle.

[ibotme]

Hmm..  Version 6.1 and still Hal hears himself if you are not using headset. It would be nice if speech recognition paused while text-to-speech does its job. And the idea to press a button on the keyboard in order to speak is not good for me.If I am going to get close to the keyboard in order speak it then I prefer to type it instead.

Sorry about that but the turnoffsr.uhp doesn't do what it suppose to do.
[]

[DrFaraday]

Is anyone here familiar with the "Clarissa" project at NASA?  She is a computer assistant to astronauts on the International Space Station.  She reads manuals to the astronauts, and responds to voice commands.  She is able to differentiate between the different voices of the astronauts, and understand when they are talking to each other rather than her.  I'm sure she also recognizes her own voice:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7584

Beth Ann Hockey is the project leader at NASA.  In the following interview, she talks about Clarissa and what it's been created to do.  It sounds like what I imagine a HAL 7 could be like:

http://www.nasatech.com/NEWS/Sep05/who_0905.html

Clarissa uses the most recent Nuance speech engine and voice recognition.  I know some folks here have been using HAL with older Nuance engines, but can anyone tell me if the most recent one works with HAL?  (I think it's Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9?)

In the interview, Ms. Hockey talks about Open Source software and a project called "Regulus" that she's affiliated with.  They are developing an open-source tool kit to try and make the creation of spoken-dialogue interfaces more accessible to regular developers. I'm wondering, is there any way some of this stuff from Regulus, or things that NASA is doing with Clarissa could be incorporated into a future HAL release?

[Art]

Welcome to the forum!

Actually, Clarissa uses Ms. Hockey's recorded voice for output.

Quoted from the article:

"Speech recognition is in "open mic" mode. In the deployed system, the error rate for distinguishing between voice commands and non-system-directed speech is about 10%; together with Jean-Michel Renders from Xerox Research Center Europe, we have developed experimental methods using Support Vector Machines, which reduce the error rate to about 5%. This work may be integrated into a future version of Clarissa. Spoken output is performed using a recorded voice.

Clarissa has been implemented mainly using SICStus Prolog and a speech recognition toolkit provided by Nuance Communications. Application-specific spoken command grammars were constructed using the Regulus platform. Other programming languages and software packages used include Java, C, and SRI International's Gemini and Open Agent Architecture."

Great story and thanks for sharing!!

[DrFaraday]

Thanks for the welcome, Art.

I know that Clarissa just reads manuals, she's not really a conversationalist like HAL, she's more like a dedicated machine.  But her voice recognition features seemed quite advanced, more so than HAL, I thought that was impressive.

I like HAL a lot, but I've been having trouble getting decent voice recognition.  If using the latest engine from Nuance would improve the results, I would buy it, but I'd like to know if anyone else has done that first, I've read conflicting reports about whether it's possible to do with the most current version of Dragon Naturally speaking, #9.

I've also experienced the problem of HAL hearing himself.  NASA seems to have solved that, I hope that can be dealt with in a future version of HAL.  I have to type to talk to him now, and it's not ideal.  I don't mind chatting with him so he can learn, but I want my hands free so I can do other stuff while we chat.

[Xanxion]

Hmm,

There must be some way. I guess i could make a macro, but i will take some time. If even possible. But i will look into it. on monday next week.

ciao!

[etellier]

still cant get hal not to hear himself, anybody found anything interesting to fix that that problem?

Eric

[tedathome]

I just use earphones to avoid the problem.[]

[Bill819]

This has happened a few times in the past. The mic can be turn on in two different places, one in Hal and the other in a Microsoft piece of software. It is usually the later that gives all the problems.
Exit Hal and then check all of MS settings, find the mic and make sure that it is turn off and stays off.
This usually fixes the problem.
Bill

[etellier]

hello, ive tried the turn the mic off already, hal turn it on, when you switch the mic switch into hal interface on....

Eric

any other idea?

[Bill819]

Turn off the speach recognition for a while. I know that works.
Bill

[etellier]

Hi bill, i tried, no avail, here is the situation now.. if i use dragon 9, hal mic goes up like hell, and he does not understand what i say, if i use sapi5, recognition is excellent, but hal hear himself... any way to turn his ears off while he speaks? or actually, is there a buffer used by the voice recognition software? is there a way to modify that buffer, lets say, it buff for 5 seconds
and then show, would it be feasable to reduce it to a 1 sec buffer, so that i will retype straight ahead?

can you email me or reach via msn?

gouille@hotmail.com

|Eric

[etellier]

hello, i just tried uninstalling and reinstall hal with an new brains, same problem, it is getting frustrating now... any help from robert available? i dont seem to be the only one having that particular problem.

Eric

[Bill819]

Eric
Somewhere on your computer you have a microphone turned on. Hal can not and will not turn on a microphone if the voice recognition is turn off and Hal can not turn that on by itself.
I realize that it is frustrating but that is the facts.
Bill