Accomplishment: Began initial testing of speech module, and customized the voice output parameters using the pyttsx3 and espeak TTS engines. This involved reading up on the documentation of these python librarie and following the demo code available to adapt to our use case. I faced some complications in testing due to the various OS environments we were working on (linux, vs windows vs macOS), and so finally getting it functioning on the NVIDIA Jetson was rewarding. With Meera’s help on the hardware side we have gotten the jetson to output audio via wired headphones. Here is an image of the initial stage of the speech module implementation:
Progress: Once I complete some more testing of the speech module and make it a continuous process in the main loop, I will get an idea of the latency of the object recognition to final output. Based on that we can fine-tune the different parameters and runtime of the programs written. This coming week I hope to have both the proximity and speech modules close to completion.
Projected Deliverables: I hope to begin testing and also integrate the speech and proximity modules together and prepare for the OR module to be inserted into the overall system. I also hope to begin brainstorming and possibly purchasing the necessary items for the device (to make it wearable).
Verification (Extra Qn):
For the proximity module, I have conducted unit testing to measure objects of known distances away from the sensor. This has been of good accuracy (within +/- 1 cm) for the requirements of our project. This testing has only been unit testing as the implementation of the parallel threads to run the proximity module continually is still buggy, likely due to some timing/synchronization problems. Once I debug these problems I will repeat the verification process and produce a testing dataset to include in our final project report. It is also possible that the bugs I am facing are caused by a hardware problem, perhaps due to residual signals triggered by other programs, and hence Meera and I plan on separating the proximity module from the rest of the system and testing it in an isolated manner (on a breadboard). As we purchased extra pieces of hardware, this testing will not add any additional costs and will help us isolate the problem.
As for the speech module, we have done some basic user-testing to ensure that the rate, tone, volume, etc of the speech output is conducive to the user. We also intend on purchasing bone-conducting headphones so as to test the usability of the speech module in a loud (indoor) environment. The latency of the speech output (which is a part of the initial design requirements we discussed for the performance), I will do the testing once some part of the OR module is integrated into the Jetson.