Hi @jgangemi, welcome to the forum! It’s a great question, and I really like @lamsey’s reply. I would approach it pretty much the way that he has described.
I wanted to highlight a few other implementations I’ve seen from members on this forum, and hopefully, they will be useful for you.
- @asanchez made a tutorial that is available on our docs, called Voice Teleoperation of Base. Phrases like “forward” triggers motions of the mobile base, and there a code explanation section that breaks down what each part of the code is doing.
- @hello-garv created a node for the Stretch Web Interface, called speech_commands.py, which builds on Alan’s tutorial. It enables voice teleop for Stretch’s other joints, but also triggers ROS services to replay saved poses. Her post has more details.
- @FergusKidd posted about example code using Azure speech-to-text and LUIS (a cloud service that understands intent from phrases) to control a Stretch. Their project went even further to use text-to-speech and Q&A services to get Stretch to give answers back.