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TTS ROS2

Overview

The tts ROS node enables a robot to speak with a human voice by providing a Text-To-Speech service. Out of the box this package listens to a speech topic, submits text to the Amazon Polly cloud service to generate an audio stream file, retrieves the audio stream from Amazon Polly, and plays the audio stream via the default output device. The nodes can be configured to use different voices as well as custom lexicons and SSML tags which enable you to control aspects of speech, such as pronunciation, volume, pitch, speed rate, etc. A sample ROS application with this node, and more details on speech customization are available within the Amazon Polly documentation.

Amazon Polly Summary: Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Amazon Polly is a Text-to-Speech service that uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize speech that sounds like a human voice. With dozens of lifelike voices across a variety of languages, you can select the ideal voice and build speech-enabled applications that work in many different countries.

License

The source code is released under an Apache 2.0.

Author: AWS RoboMaker
Affiliation: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

RoboMaker cloud extensions rely on third-party software licensed under open-source licenses and are provided for demonstration purposes only. Incorporation or use of RoboMaker cloud extensions in connection with your production workloads or commercial product(s) or devices may affect your legal rights or obligations under the applicable open-source licenses. License information for this repository can be found here. AWS does not provide support for this cloud extension. You are solely responsible for how you configure, deploy, and maintain this cloud extension in your workloads or commercial product(s) or devices.

Supported ROS Distributions

  • Dashing

Installation

AWS Credentials

You will need to create an AWS Account and configure the credentials to be able to communicate with AWS services. You may find AWS Configuration and Credential Files helpful.

This node will require the following AWS account IAM role permissions:

  • polly:SynthesizeSpeech

Building from Source

To build from source you'll need to create a new workspace, clone and checkout the latest release branch of this repository, install all the dependencies, and compile. If you need the latest development features you can clone from the master branch instead of the latest release branch. While we guarantee the release branches are stable, the master should be considered to have an unstable build due to ongoing development.

  • Create a ROS workspace and a source directory

      mkdir -p ~/ros-workspace/src

  • Clone the package into the source directory .

      cd ~/ros-workspace/src
  git clone https://github.com/aws-robotics/tts-ros2.git -b release-latest

  • Install dependencies

      cd ~/ros-workspace 
  sudo apt-get update && rosdep update
  rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

Note: If building the master branch instead of a release branch you may need to also checkout and build the master branches of the packages this package depends on.

  • Build the packages

      cd ~/ros-workspace && colcon build

  • Configure ROS library Path

      source ~/ros-workspace/install/setup.bash

  • Build and run the unit tests

      colcon test --packages-select tts && colcon test-result --all

Test on Containers/Virtual Machines

Even if your container or virtual machine does not have audio device, you can still test TTS by leveraging an audio server.

The following is an example setup on a MacBook with PulseAudio as the audio server. If you are new to PulseAudio, you may want to read the PulseAudio Documentation.

Step 1: Start PulseAudio on your laptop

After installation, start the audio server with module-native-protocol-tcp loaded:

pulseaudio --load=module-native-protocol-tcp --exit-idle-time=-1 --log-target=stderr -v

Note the extra arguments -v and --log-target are used for easier troubleshooting.

Step 2: Run TTS nodes in container

In your container, make sure you set the right environment variables. For example, you can start the container using docker run -it -e PULSE_SERVER=docker.for.mac.localhost ubuntu:16.04.

Then you will be able to run ROS nodes in the container and hear the audio from your laptop speakers.

Troubleshooting

If your laptop has multiple audio output devices, make sure the right one has the right volume. This command will give you a list of output devices and tell you which one has been selected:

pacmd list-sinks | grep -E '(index:|name:|product.name)'

Usage

Run the node

  • Plain text

    • ros2 launch tts tts.launch.py
    • ros2 run tts voicer 'Hello World'

  • SSML

    • ros2 launch tts tts.launch.py
    • ros2 run tts voicer '<speak>Mary has a <amazon:effect name="whispered">little lamb.</amazon:effect></speak>' '{"text_type":"ssml"}'

Configuration File and Parameters

Parameter Name Type Description
polly_action string Currently only one action named SynthesizeSpeech is supported.
text string The text to be synthesized. It can be plain text or SSML. See also text_type.
text_type string A user can choose from text and ssml. Default: text.
voice_id string The list of supported voices can be found on official Amazon Polly document. Default: Joanna
output_format string Valid formats are ogg_vorbis, mp3 and pcm. Default: ogg_vorbis
output_path string The audio data will be saved as a local file for playback and reuse/inspection purposes. This parameter is to provide a preferred path to save the file. Default: .
sample_rate string Note 16000 is a valid sample rate for all supported formats. Default: 16000.

Nodes

polly

Polly node is the engine for the synthesizing job. It provides user-friendly yet powerful APIs so a user doesn't have to deal with technical details of AWS service calls.

Services

  • polly (tts/Polly)

    Call the service to use Amazon Polly to synthesize the audio.

Reserved for future usage

  • language_code (string, default: None)

    A user doesn't have to provide a language code and this is reserved for future usage.

  • lexicon_content (string, default: None)

  • lexicon_name (string, default: None)

  • lexicon_names (string[], default: empty)

  • speech_mark_types (string[], default: empty)

  • max_results (uint32, default: None)

  • next_token (string, default: None)

  • sns_topic_arn (string, default: None)

  • task_id (string, default: None)

  • task_status (string, default: iNone)

  • output_s3_bucket_name (string, default: None)

  • output_s3_key_prefix (string, default: None)

  • include_additional_language_codes (bool, default: None)

synthesizer node

Services

  • synthesizer (tts/Synthesizer)

    Call the service to synthesize.

Parameters

  • text (string)

    The text to be synthesized.

  • metadata (string, JSON format)

    Optional, for user to have control over how synthesis happens.

tts node

Action

  • speech

Parameters

  • text (string)

    The text to be synthesized.

  • metadata (string, JSON format)

    Optional, for user to have control over how synthesis happens.