First published: July 1, 2021 @ 9:08 pm
Mycroft is an open-source, third-party natural language processing (NLP) engine that can build an always-on personal assistant. It is under development by mycroftai.com and is available for free on GitHub.
The Mycroft platform, which provides a simple API for building voice user interfaces (VUI) and services powers Mycroft.
Mycroft’s platform uses the Google Cloud Speech API for speech recognition, voice technology, and other services. It also includes an Amazon Lex conversational interface for composing messages to Amazon smart speakers, Alexa.
The Mycroft platform consists of two parts:
1) The hardware platform
Comprises a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B computer running Raspbian Linux with a high-performance processor and memory.
It also has voice recognition software built-in from open source libraries, including TensorFlow, the Alex software library from Carnegie Mellon University, and Google’s BSD speech recognition library from its Pocketsphinx project. (Currently Raspbian 8; should work with other versions as well.)
2) The Mycroft application software
The software platform is running on the hardware platform, including an open-source NLP engine called Cerevox, which runs on the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. The hardware platform is an example of a digital voice assistant, or “voice-enabled machine”.
Mycroft’s hardware platform is always on and listening for user requests. The platform also allows for customization and expansion by installing additional hardware components such as speech recognition hardware, which would allow the platform to run more advanced speech recognition software such as Google’s DeepMind Voice or Carnegie Mellon’s Alex software.
Mycroft’s platform is currently gaining traction in the speech recognition space and has created some of the most advanced voice-enabled machine projects with a voice interface in existence.
The platform has created Amazon smart speakers Alexa skills that integrate with existing speech recognition platforms, including a specific skill for Mycroft called the Mycroft Alexa Skill.
The skill allows users to use Alexa and Mycroft together, as well as add new features to Alexa using Mycroft’s platform. Mycroft is a source voice assistant and is an always-on personal assistant that can answer user questions using speech recognition and natural language command.
In this sense, it is similar to Amazon’s Echo speaker and its associated Alexa conversational skills.
However, while Echo focuses on voice input only (including its built-in speaker), Mycroft can also receive text input from users using the microphone or camera on their mobile phone or computer.
This allows for text responses to user questions from other services such as Slack or Facebook Messenger (for example).
The Benefits of Using Mycroft AI Open Data
There are many advantages to using Mycroft AI Open Data for your projects. We will look at three of the most important:
1. Speed of Development
Mycroft AI Open Data gives you access to a wide range of speech, text, and image recognition models. With these, you can develop faster than if you were developing from scratch.
2. Cost
Using Mycroft AI Open Data gives you access to the latest Mycroft technologies, including our voice recognition engine. You don’t have to buy all of these components separately, and this saves money and development time.
3. Ease of Development
Mycroft AI Open Data gives you access to the latest Mycroft technologies. Using the voice commands and speech recognition engine or text-to-speech engine is easy for beginners, but also for experts who want to push the boundaries of what is possible with Mycroft’s technologies.
If you want to build a fully-featured natural language processing system with a voice interface that can understand what people are saying in your applications, then Mycroft AI Open Data is for you.
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