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Sep 94 min read

Ai agent for grocery store or alike


A robot that hear and answer questions from human in a grocery store


In this tutorial, we will build a Python neural network for speech recognition that translates sound waves into words. One exciting real-world application of this project is creating a agent for grocery stores that promotes products and answers customer questions. We'll use deep learning techniques to design, train, and implement a neural network capable of recognizing speech. By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a speech recognition model ready to enhance customer experiences in various environments.


You will learn to build an Ai agent for grocery store or alike

  • How to preprocess sound waves for neural networks

  • Building a neural network in Python for speech recognition

  • Training a neural network with TensorFlow

  • Deploying the model to create a product-promoting agent for grocery stores

This project demonstrates how you can use machine learning to create innovative, interactive AI-powered solutions.


Prerequisites

Before you start, ensure that you have a basic understanding of:

  • Python programming and neural networks

  • Installed the following libraries: TensorFlow, numpy, librosa, and scikit-learn.


You can install the required libraries with the following command:

pip install tensorflow numpy librosa scikit-learn

Step 1: Preprocessing Sound Waves for Speech Recognition


Loading and Preprocessing Sound Data

To recognize speech, we need to process the audio data. We'll use the Librosa library to load sound files and convert them into features that a neural network can process. We'll extract MFCC (Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients), a popular technique for feature extraction in speech recognition.


Why Use MFCC for Sound Wave Preprocessing?

MFCC (Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients) help convert sound waves into a compact feature representation. MFCC reduces noise and extracts the essential components of the sound, making it ideal for speech recognition neural networks.


Step 2: Building the Neural Network for Speech Recognition

Once the audio features are extracted, we’ll build the neural network model in TensorFlow. This model will process the MFCC features and predict which word was spoken.


Designing the Neural Network

We’ll use a simple deep learning architecture with dense layers and a softmax output layer to classify spoken words.


import tensorflow as tf
from tensorflow.keras import layers, models

def build_model(input_shape):
    model = models.Sequential()
    model.add(layers.Dense(256, activation='relu', input_shape=(input_shape,)))
    model.add(layers.Dropout(0.3))
    model.add(layers.Dense(128, activation='relu'))
    model.add(layers.Dropout(0.3))
    model.add(layers.Dense(64, activation='relu'))
    model.add(layers.Dense(10, activation='softmax'))  # Assuming 10 words to classify
    model.compile(optimizer='adam', loss='sparse_categorical_crossentropy', metrics=['accuracy'])
    return model

# Building the model
input_shape = audio_features.shape[0]
model = build_model(input_shape)
model.summary()

Why This Architecture?

  • Dense layers allow the network to learn complex patterns in the audio features.

  • Dropout layers help prevent overfitting by randomly turning off neurons during training.

  • Softmax activation provides a probabilistic output, making it ideal for word classification.


Step 3: Training the Neural Network

Now that our model is built, it’s time to train it. We assume you have pre-labeled audio data representing different words. Here’s how to split the data into training and testing sets and train the network:


from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

# Assume X is the set of all preprocessed audio features and y is the corresponding labels
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.2, random_state=42)

# Train the model
model.fit(X_train, y_train, epochs=20, validation_data=(X_test, y_test))

# Evaluate model performance
loss, accuracy = model.evaluate(X_test, y_test)
print(f"Test Accuracy: {accuracy:.2f}")

Why Use Speech Datasets?

To build a robust speech recognition model, you’ll need a large labeled dataset. Popular choices include:

  • LibriSpeech

  • Google Speech Commands



Having a diverse dataset will help your model generalize well across different speakers and background noises.


Step 4: Deploying the Grocery Store agent

Now comes the fun part Ai agent for grocery store or alike — building a grocery store agent that listens to customers and responds with product promotions. The agent uses the trained neural network to recognize spoken words and provides corresponding product information.


Creating the agent Logic

We can design the agent to listen for certain product-related words and respond accordingly:


def grocery_agent(predicted_word):
    product_promotions = {
        'milk': 'Our fresh organic milk is on sale!',
        'bread': 'Try our new gluten-free bread!',
        'apple': 'We have a discount on Granny Smith apples today!',
        'egg': 'Farm-fresh eggs are available in aisle 3.'
    }
    response = product_promotions.get(predicted_word, "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that.")
    return response

# Simulated prediction (replace with real predictions from your model)
predicted_word = 'apple'  # Example of what the model might predict
response = grocery_agent(predicted_word)
print(response)

In a real-world scenario, you would capture real-time voice input from customers, use the neural network to predict what they said, and respond with promotional messages.


Conclusion

In this tutorial, we built a Python neural network for speech recognition and applied it to create a grocery store agent. By training a neural network to recognize words from sound waves, we showed how AI can interact with customers in real-time and promote products effectively.


Summary of Steps:

  1. Preprocess sound waves using MFCC features.

  2. Build a neural network with TensorFlow.

  3. Train the neural network on labeled audio data.

  4. Deploy the model to create an AI-powered agent that enhances customer interaction in grocery stores.

With further enhancements, you could integrate live voice input and link the agent to a store’s product database. This AI-powered grocery store agent could significantly improve customer service by providing fast, personalized responses.


Next article will be about using the same solution but with BERT to inject more power into our agent to understand conversations with a large language model (LLM) so stay tuned!

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