Vocally and Aldebaran has provided a first version of the functions of echo cancellation, noise reduction and sound localization. They have built a corpus of audio signals that will be used to model the audio system of Nai and to evaluate the performances of the developed functions. The integration on Nao was delayed because it is not possible to make a synchronized acquisition of the input and the output audio buffers. This synchronization is necessary for the echo cancellation function in which the robot is supposed to cancel its own voice in the audio signal acquired by its microphones. Aldebaran has developed standalone software to overcome this problem. It will allow the testing of the Vocally function.

Vocally and Aldebaran still work on improving their own echo cancellation, noise reduction and sound localization algorithms. Since few time, a new speech recognition engine has been integrated on Nao, which allows to have 95% of recognition rate when the speaker is saying words at 1m of the robot, even with important fan noise. It has been decided that the recognition of the short orders said to the robot will be made directly with this embedded recognition engine. To improve the natural language understanding by the robot, a recognition engine based on a remote server will be used. The  improvments achieved by vocally on the performances of this engine will soon be evaluated.

Vocally has been working on echo cancellation (the robot listens while it is talking). The implementation on Nao raised two problems. When Nao talks, it saturates the loud speaker and the acquisition of the signals from the loudspeaker and from the microphones is not synchronized. Aldebaran has to work on these issues. Aldebaran has developed an experimental protocol to have an objective way of evaluation the performances of the development made within the project.

Aldebaran has integrated a first version of the noise filter initially available at Vocally. The performances obtained by this version will be a reference to evaluate the improvement brought by the project. Using a new version of Nao supplied by Aldebaran, Vocally has built an audio corpus that will be used to optimize the low level processing: the noise filter, the echo cancellation function and the robust recognition of the word Nao.

Aldebaran has tested the performances of the audio functions on the new head of Nao integrating an Intel ATOM CPU. The noise filter delivered by Vocally to Aldebaran uses 4% of CPU. Aldebaran evaluated the performances of the localization of the speaker with the ATOM. It uses 5% of CPU localize the speaker at a precision of 20°. Vocally will now optimize his software on the new head and Aldebaran will evaluate the improvement of the localization brought by the noise filter.