Tag Archives: Cognitive Services

The Voice-Controlled, Face Recognizing, Drone Journey – Part 4

Introduction to the Drone Journey

Cognitive Services

This post is the fourth post in documenting the steps I went through on my journey to build an autonomous, voice-controlled, face recognizing drone. There are 4 other posts building up to this one which you can find at the end of this post.

Focus of this post

In this post I am going to pick-up where we left off and cover how you can:

  • Install the packages you need to access Microsoft Cognitive Services from node.js
  • Understand some of the capabilities of Microsoft Cognitive Services
  • Start to see how the face API can be used from node.js
  • Understand how to use the ImageMagick library (thanks to the tip from Lukas) to annotate the images that come back with the faces in node.js

Adding Intelligence To The Drone

In this part of the project we start to add some intelligence to our drone. We will do that using Microsoft Cognitive Services. There is a great introduction in this YouTube video which I encourage you to take a look at.

For this demo the primary APIs we will use are the Face API and the Speech APIs so I will focus there over the next few posts.

Continue reading The Voice-Controlled, Face Recognizing, Drone Journey – Part 4

Building an autonomous, voice-controlled face recognizing drone

The inspiration

Our world, and the technology landscape that is helping to fuel it, are changing at a staggering pace. With nearly 20 years in the IT industry the only constant I have had to handle is change.

Many years ago I resolved to ensure I was learning on all levels and, while possible, that includes keeping my hands near the tools of the transformation. The technology!

The quote above really sums up why twice a year I try to find a side project that lets me dive deep into selective technology I have not used much previously. I do that so that I can “touch” it. That in turn enables me understand it, and how it might be useful, better.

I value such periods. The time spent on such projects helps me when it comes to my day to day job of helping steer the business and helping companies transform through the use of new technologies.

With that in mind, in the run up to Christmas, I was looking around for my next project.  It was then I stumbled across a blog post from October 2016 by Lukas Biewald. The blog post was entitled “How to build an autonomous, voice-controlled, face recognizing drone for $200“. I knew immediately I had found my next project.

Drone Intro

Continue reading Building an autonomous, voice-controlled face recognizing drone