Giant Robot

Assistive speech devices enable non-verbal people to communicate more easily by allowing them to quickly build a sentence by choosing from a graphical vocabulary and then synthesising speech output. Project Ladybird (internal name!) aims to make available a fully open-source assistive speech device which offers a friendly and flexible  interface on highly available hardware.

Currently we have a simple menu / text input interface in Python, SQLite DB backend and speech synth by system() call to any TTS available on the local OS (Plaintalk, Festival, Espeak etc). First steps are to simplify and improve the user interface, compile a dictionary of most-used communication words, and enhance the UI by sourcing graphics to represent each word.

A core aim is to make the project readily accessible to as many people as possible, by ensuring it runs on hardware already available or accessible to the end user. Initial target deployment platforms, all currently priced below NZD$500, are:

• iPod touch (requires external amplification)
• eee 701
  
• XO laptop
  
• Generic family desktop PC