“In this tutorial I show you how to make a voice controlled robotic tank controlled, using a smartphone, Google Assistant, IFTTT and Adafruit.io platforms. An ESP8266 Wemos D1 board was used in this project. It receives commands from a Wi-Fi network and control the speed of the motors. Other development boards might also be used (NodeMCU, Firebeetle, etc.), and the principles presented in this tutorial can be applied on other models of robots and other IoT gadgets.
I’ve previously designed a Blynk controlled robotic tank. It connects to a Wi-Fi network and receives commands from Blynk server. A smartphone running Blynk app was used as a remote contro, and different input methods were used: push buttons, sliding bars and even smartphone’s accelerometer. You can find more about this project here: https://www.instructables.com/id/Wi-Fi-Controlled-Robot-Using-Wemos-D1-ESP8266-Ardu/
This time I decided to try a different way to control the same robot: voice commands. It might be usefull if you want to remotelly control a robot without using your hands, or if you want to made it accessible for someone with limited movements. One might think of a robotic voice controlled wheel chair, for instance.
A DIY robotic kit was used, along with some of my favourite tools: Adafruit.io, IFTTT and Arduino IDE. You can also use different kit or even desing your own robot using simple materials, without the need of using complex tools such as 3D printers and laser cutting machines.”