Successful cases
mycroft.eus
:
In the Mycroft.eus project, a smart, Basque-speaking loudspeaker based on the Mycroft.AI free project has been developed. Besides being in Basque, the guaranteeing of privacy, the gender perspective and the local ambit have also been developed.
This project has addressed the need to produce a smart loudspeaker that will speak in Basque because the giants that produce such devices do not cater for Basque. In addition, beyond the usual services offered by smart loudspeakers, services linked to Basque are provided (to listen to the news broadcasts by various Basque media, watch TV programmes and films in Basque, etc.).
The impact of this project will be very important for the Basque language. Indeed, it is very important for teenagers and children to be able to speak to smart speakers in Basque, as their relationship with technology fills a huge proportion of their day-to-day activities.
mycroft.eus :
Overview
In the Mycroft.eus project, a smart, Basque-speaking loudspeaker based on the Mycroft.AI free project has been developed. Besides being in Basque, the guaranteeing of privacy, the gender perspective and the local ambit have also been developed.
This project has addressed the need to produce a smart loudspeaker that will speak in Basque because the giants that produce such devices do not cater for Basque. In addition, beyond the usual services offered by smart loudspeakers, services linked to Basque are provided (to listen to the news broadcasts by various Basque media, watch TV programmes and films in Basque, etc.).
The impact of this project will be very important for the Basque language. Indeed, it is very important for teenagers and children to be able to speak to smart speakers in Basque, as their relationship with technology fills a huge proportion of their day-to-day activities.
Challenge
To produce a smart speaker in Basque, we adapted a smart loudspeaker of the Mycroft.AI free software so that it could understand and speak in Basque. As it is free software, things can be added and changed; so we added the capability of speaking in Basque. To achieve the speech recognition and synthesis that the tool needs, we made use of the language technologies applied to Basque that the Elhuyar Foundation has. Finally, to improve speech recognition and synthesis, we used AI and Deep Learning technology.
In this project significant developments were made in terms of Basque-language speech recognition (noisy environments, command recognition) and (neural, neutral) speech synthesis.
Collaboration
Collaborators:
- Talaios Koop.
- Skura Mobile
- Funding:
- Charter Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.
- Etorkizuna Eraikiz call.
- European Language Grid.
- Pilot Projects program.
- Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment of the Basque Government.
- HAZITEK call.
Result
The Mycroft.eus software for the smart speaker in Basque has now been developed, and can be downloaded, installed and used by anyone from the Mycroft.AI software store.
www.mycroft.eus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHzsHQpla38
Project images
