Introduction to VOCOL

     VOCOL is a 6808 machine language program contained in the two EPROMS you installed on the MEMCOM board.  This software controls the Speech Recognition Processor, movement of the robot’s motors and the robot’s speech synthesizer all in response to your voice and certain keyboard entry commands.

     VOCOL, like any programming language, requires a certain amount of time and effort to learn.  It should only take you about one hour to learn the language, but, if you have never worked with computer voice recognition equipment before, it may take you longer.

     Please do not expect the robot to understand you perfectly the first time you use the VCS.  The VOREC board is capable of up to 98% recognition accuracy under ideal conditions such as a very quiet room and a speaker (person)) trained to work with computer voice recognition. The recognition accuracy can be considerably degraded in a noisy environment and with a speaker with poor enunciation.  Have patience and frequently re-train words which the system is having trouble recognizing.

     Before you can use VOCOL to verbally command the robot, you must first train the VOREC to recognize your voice.  The voice training process is handled for you by VOCOL.  It causes the robot to tell you what words it wants you to say.  All you have to do is following the robot’s instructions. 

     VOCOL has a single entry point at $A33B and occupies the robot’s memory space from $A000 through $AFFF.  VOCOL also uses RAM memory locations at $4000 through $402C for parameter storage and writes a program which builds upward in memory starting at $402D.  Please note that VOCOL requires that a 2K RAM chip be installed at IC location U10 on the MEMCOM board. If you have replaced this RAM chip with an EPROM, VOCOL will not work.

    Now to the fun part……

The next chapter in the manual is “VOCOL Training Session” in which you are taken through training and practice sessions to get HErO I set to recognize your voice.

The second session ends with:

“Before going on, perhaps (if you’re philosophically inclined), it might be worthwhile to pause for a moment and ponder what you have just seen. There before you sits an electromechanical device obeying primitive commands given to it verbally. Think of what personal robots will be able to do 10 to 20 years from now.”