An animation showing how the eyes light up when you are talking to the otter.

To show that the otter was listening to the users, the eyes light up when they talk to it, similarly to how an Alexa lights up with a blue ring and the google home displays three white dots.

Due to COVID-19 the technology could not be tested physically due to lack of resources.

The otters eyes light up either when the user says Tarka of when it is removed from the charging base, this has two purposes, to provide the user with acknowledgement that they are being listened to, as well as gathering voice samples to benefit the cloud based algorithm.

The way that it recognises voice is by having multiple microphones located inside it that perform different functions in the same way that an Alexa does, for example a microphone that can distinguish voice from background noise or a micrphone that can detect voice from far away.

Tarka also has many voice samples of the word ‘Tarka’ databased so that it is able to detect with extreme accuracy when that word is said so it can start gathering more voice samples as well as sending a command to make the eyes light up.

Flowchart of process

Advantages of using LEDs:

• Very energy efficient
• Can switch on and off regularly without and hinderance to performance
• Can function on low power voltage

Disadvantages:

• Hard to replace in otter if broken