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Mycroft is a free and open-source software virtual assistant that uses a
natural language user interface Natural-language user interface (LUI or NLUI) is a type of computer human interface where linguistic phenomena such as verbs, phrases and clauses act as UI controls for creating, selecting and modifying data in software applications. In interface d ...
. Its code was formerly
copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...
, but is now under a
permissive license A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free-software license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how the software can be used, modified, and redistributed, ...
. It is named after a fictional computer from 1966 science fiction novel ''
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress ''The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress'' is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein about a lunar colony's revolt against absentee rule from Earth. The novel illustrates and discusses libertarian ideals. It is respected for it ...
''.


History

Inspiration for Mycroft came when Ryan Sipes and Joshua Montgomery were visiting a makerspace in
Kansas City, MO Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...
, where they came across a simple and basic intelligent virtual assistant project. They were interested in the technology, but did not like its inflexibility. Montgomery believes that the burgeoning industry of intelligent personal assistance poses privacy concerns for users and has promised that Mycroft will protect privacy through its open source machine learning platform. Mycroft AI, Inc., has won several awards including the prestigious Techweek's KC Launch competition in 2016. They were part of the Sprint Accelerator 2016 class in Kansas City and joined
500 Startups 500 Global (previously 500 Startups) is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, Californi ...
Batch 20 in February 2017. The company accepted a strategic investment from
Jaguar Land Rover Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC is the holding company of Jaguar Land Rover Limited (also known as JLR), and is a British multinational automobile manufacturer which produces luxury vehicles and sport utility vehicles. Jaguar Land Rover is a ...
during this same time period. The company had raised more than $2.5 million from institutional investors before they opted to offer shares of the company to the public through StartEngine, an equity crowdfunding platform.


Software


Mycroft voice stack

Mycroft provides free software for most parts of the voice stack.


Wake Word

Mycroft does Wake Word spotting, also called
keyword spotting Keyword spotting (or more simply, word spotting) is a problem that was historically first defined in the context of speech processing. In speech processing, keyword spotting deals with the identification of keywords in utterances. Keyword spottin ...
, through its ''Precise'' Wake Word engine. Prior to Precise becoming the default Wake Word engine, Mycroft employed PocketSphinx. Instead of being based on
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
recognition, Precise uses a trained recurrent neural network to distinguish between sounds which are, and which aren't Wake Words.


Speech to text

Mycroft is partnering with Mozilla's
Common Voice Common Voice is a crowdsourcing project started by Mozilla to create a free database for speech recognition software. The project is supported by volunteers who record sample sentences with a microphone and review recordings of other users. ...
Project to leverage their DeepSpeech
speech to text Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the mai ...
software.


Intent parsing

Mycroft uses an intent parser called Adapt to convert natural language into machine-readable data structures. Adapt undertakes intent parsing by matching specific keywords in an order within an utterance. They also have a parser, ''Padatious''. Padatious, in contrast, uses example-based inference to determine intent.


Text to speech

For speech synthesis Mycroft uses Mimic, which is based on the Festival Lite speech synthesis system.


Modular design and interoperability

Mycroft is designed to be modular, so users are able to change its components. For example,
espeak eSpeakNG is a free and open-source, cross-platform, compact, software speech synthesizer. It uses a formant synthesis method, providing many languages in a relatively small file size. Much of the programming for eSpeakNG's language support is im ...
can be used instead of Mimic.


Hardware

The Mycroft project is also working on and selling smart speakers that run its software. All of its hardware is open-source, released under the
CERN Open Hardware Licence The CERN Open Hardware Licence (OHL or CERN OHL) is a license used in open-source hardware projects. It was created by CERN, which published version 1.0 in March 2011. Version 1.1 was published in July 2011. Version 1.2 was published in September ...
. Its first hardware project was the Mark I, targeted primarily at developers. Its production was partially funded through a
Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...
campaign, which finished successfully. Units started shipping out in April 2016. Its most recent hardware project is the Mark II, intended for general usage, not just for developers. Unlike the Mark I, the Mark II is equipped with a screen, being able to relay information both visually as well as acoustically. As with the Mark I, the Mark II's production was partially funded through a Kickstarter campaign, which wrapped up in February 2018, hitting almost 8 times its original goal. As of February 2021, the Mark II had not yet begun shipping to crowd-funders, though shipping of the Development Kit was imminent.


Partnerships

Mycroft has undertaken several commercial collaborations. In May 2018, the company partnered with WorkAround, an impact sourcing provider who broker work opportunities for refugees, to undertake bulk machine learning training. In October 2018, Mycroft collaborated with
disease surveillance Disease surveillance is an epidemiological practice by which the spread of disease is monitored in order to establish patterns of progression. The main role of disease surveillance is to predict, observe, and minimize the harm caused by outbreak, ...
and forecasting company, SickWeather, to identify the frequency of coughing on public transport, funded by the City of Kansas City, Missouri.


See also

*
Amazon Alexa Amazon Alexa, also known simply as Alexa, is a virtual assistant technology largely based on a Polish speech synthesiser named Ivona, bought by Amazon in 2013. It was first used in the Amazon Echo smart speaker and the Echo Dot, Echo Studio a ...
* Cortana * Google Assistant * Siri


References

{{Smart speaker Agent-based software Free and open-source software Home automation Internet of things Open-source hardware Smart devices Smart home hubs Smart speakers Virtual assistants