🗣️ Machines That Hear · Day 8

Wake Words & Commands

"Hey Siri!" "Alexa!" How does a device wait, silently listening, for a special word — then follow your spoken commands? Let's turn on a real voice AI (running on your device!) and drive a robot with your voice.

↓ wake it up
🎤 Step 1 · Turn On Voice Control

A tiny AI that listens for command words

This loads a small on-device AI trained to recognize spoken words like up, down, left, right, go, stop. It listens right in your browser — your voice never leaves your device. 🛡️ (First time downloads a few MB; then it's cached.)

voice off
say a command…
👂 Wake word idea: real assistants train a custom wake word like "Hey Pixel" so they aren't always fully listening (that saves battery and protects privacy). Our tiny model already knows "go" — so say "go" to wake the robot and "stop" to put it to sleep!
🕹️ Boss Build · Command the Robot

Drive it with your voice

Say "go" to wake the robot, then say "up", "down", "left", "right" to move it. Collect all 3 ⭐! (No mic? The arrow pad works too.)

🤖
⭐ collected: 0 / 3 · 💤 asleep
Turn on voice control above, say "go" to wake the robot, then say directions — or tap the pad!

🎉 Day 8 Complete!

You built a real voice-command system: a wake word that listens politely, then spoken commands that make things happen — all on your device. That's the core of every voice assistant and smart toy.

Day 9: Scoring Speech AIs →
Tomorrow: how do we grade a speech AI? Meet Word Error Rate — and watch noise wreck it. 📊
AI Adventure · Machines That Hear · Day 8 — made for young inventors 🚀