Artificial Intelligence: URBI, Gostai's state-of-the-art platform voice-enabled by Acapela

Gostai aims to provide robot manufacturers and end-users with the best universal robotic platform, associated with state-of-the-art software modules (speech technologies, face detection, etc.), in partnership with leading international robotics companies and university research laboratories.

Gostai's core technology is URBI, a powerful platform that allows for the control of hardware and software components in a flexible and simple manner.



Acapela's High Quality text to speech solution adds a human touch to Gostai's offer, enabling robot manufacturers to voice animate their interfaces with very natural, pleasant and intelligible voices in French and English.



“Speech synthesis is an essential component for robotics, making it possible to develop interaction within highly sophisticated applications. When associated with voice recognition, it turns robots into powerful social computers,” stated BenoÎt Pothier, a research engineer at Gostai. URBI is a small revolution in the world of programming. It offers a very simple but effective means of controlling any kind of robot or complex system, such as a video game, using a straightforward and convenient scripting language, which can be interfaced with the very latest programming languages (C++, Java, Matlab, etc.) and several operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux).



URBI is based on a client/server architecture, which ensures a great deal of flexibility. URBI includes powerful features compared to existing scripting solutions: parallel execution of commands, event programming, command tagging, dynamic variables, etc.



URBI is currently used by research laboratories, industries, and even enthusiasts.



Gostai also offers various tools to developers: URBI Development Studio, URBI Motion Editor and URBI Remote Professional. www.gostai.com



A Gostai prototype voice enabled by Acapela was demonstrated live during IRT'06, the International Next Generation Robot Fair, held in Osaka, Japan, from 30 November to 2 December. www.irt-japan.com/en/index.htm