In this chapter, I talked about how to get your robot to talk and recognize what you're saying. I also showed you how to use speech technology written in other languages, and I gave a simple introduction to the Java Native Interface (JNI).

The JNI example, TempConvert, does a simple temperature conversion using a C++ project and class to perform the calculation. You should be able to follow the step-by-step example to create your own JNI classes.

In section 5.1, I introduced the JVoice interface to standardize implementation of the three text-to-speech classes. The first, JavaVoice, uses the Java Speech API (JSAPI) to produce speech from text. The second, FreeTTSVoice, uses the FreeTTS speech synthesis libraries to produce speech from text. The third, MicrosoftVoice, uses JNI to connect the speech synthesizer engine built in to my system after installing the Microsoft Speech API (MSAPI). Also in section 5.1, I showed a sample class that tests the voice quality of all three speech synthesis engines. In section 5.2, I introduced the JRecognizer interface, used for standardizing implementations of the following two speech recognition classes. The first recognizer, SphinxSR, uses a grammar file, a configuration file, and the synthesizer from the Sphinx-4 project. The second recognizer uses JNI to connect to the Microsoft speech recognition engine. Also in section 5.2, I wrote a sample class that echoes what's heard in continuous dictation. Personally, I like MicrosoftVoice for sound quality and SphinxSR for recognition. I'll use these in Chapter 9.

Now that our PC can speak and listen, it's time to get it to see, which is the topic of the next chapter.