Amazon Alexa with ROS running locally

Question

I'm running alexa-app server locally on my robot using roslibjs on port 8081, a websocket server (rosbridge_server) on port 9090 and i have connected the alexa-server to a ros service running on the robot to send commands to it.( For example: Move from point A to B).

I have tried using bespoke tunnel however, it did not work well. Right now I'm trying to use ngrok to forward the alexa server running on 8081 so that my alexa skills kit can then communicate with it.

When i test my skill on alexa skills kit the request is sent correctly however, when i test using voice commands using an echo im getting an error.

Is there any other way to connect the alexa skills kit (running remotely) with the alexa-app server (running locally) ?

Here's the link of the github repo i am using for this: https://github.com/mdeyo/alexa-node-ROS

My goal is to use amazon echo to control the robot (running on ROS) using voice commands.

Answer 1

Check out this project written by one of my mentors: Creating a voice controlled drone. I was not involved in this project but it sounds to be exactly what you're after. There is a helpful resource diagram for blending together Amazon's services.

https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/Tx3OXHF7V6N293L/how-to-build-a-portable-voice-controlled-drone-for-under-500