You can use TTS speach output by using the cob_script_server.

Starting Sound

NOTE: If you login remotely via ssh, login without -X.

roslaunch cob_sound sound.launch

Usage

You can either call and action or a service, e.g.

rosservice call /sound/say "Hello, my name is Care-O-bot."

You can mute and unmute the output

rosservice call /sound/mute
rosservice call /sound/unmute

Using festival

By default festival is used.

Using cepstral

For cepstral you need to buy a license key.

For using cepstral instead of festival please set the mode to cepstral with

rosparam set /sound/mode cepstral

Installing cepstral vices and license

Download and install voice. Adopted from this tutorial.

• Download a voice file from http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/personal.php

  • e.g. Linux 32bit or 64bit, US English, David:

wget http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/installers/linux32/Cepstral_David_i386-linux_6.2.3.873.tar.gz
wget http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/installers/linux64/Cepstral_David_x86-64-linux_6.2.3.873.tar.gz

• e.g. Linux 32bit or 64bit, US English, Diane:

wget http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/installers/linux32/Cepstral_Diane_i386-linux_6.2.3.873.tar.gz
wget http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/installers/linux64/Cepstral_Diane_x86-64-linux_6.2.3.873.gz

• e.g. Linux 32bit or 64bit, German, Matthias:

wget http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/installers/linux32/Cepstral_Matthias_i386-linux_6.2.3.873.tar.gz
wget http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/installers/linux64/Cepstral_Matthias_x86-64-linux_6.2.3.873.tar.gz

• e.g. Linux 32bit or 64bit, German, Katrin:

wget http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/installers/linux32/Cepstral_Katrin_i386-linux_6.2.3.873.tar.gz
wget http://www.cepstral.com/downloads/installers/linux64/Cepstral_Katrin_x86-64-linux_6.2.3.873.tar.gz

• unpack and install

tar xzvf Cepstral_David_x86-64-linux_6.2.3.873.tar.gz
cd Cepstral_David_x86-64-linux_6.2.3.873
sudo ./install.sh
sudo touch /etc/ld.so.conf.d/cepstral.conf
sudo sh -c 'echo "/opt/swift/lib" > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/cepstral.conf'
sudo ldconfig

* apply fix for Ubuntu > 12.04

roscd cob_sound
sudo ./fix_swift_for_precise.sh

if that fix doesn't help, try to install alsa-oss

sudo apt-get install alsa-oss

and modify /usr/local/bin/swift_fix to contain

if test -x /usr/bin/padsp ; then  exec aoss /opt/swift/bin/swift "$@" ; else  exec /opt/swift/bin/swift "$@" ; fi

* Register voice with license (you need to buy a license from http://www.cepstral.com, for IPA robots ask UHR or FMW for license key)

sudo swift --reg-voice

Setting the sound volume

Either use alsamixer:

alsamixer

or use alsactl: For setting the sound to xx% use

amixer -c 1 set Speaker xx%

or

amixer -c 1 set PCM xx%

5% is a reasonable volume. To store the settings permanently, type

sudo alsactl store