⭐ Final Grade: 17/20

This repository contains the work developed for my Master's dissertation in Informatics Engineering (October 2025). The project, titled Clarisse, is a privacy-focused virtual home assistant designed to operate using entirely open-source technologies, avoiding reliance on proprietary cloud ecosystems like Alexa or Google Assistant.

Clarisse was developed within the Ready to Use Technology (R2UT) project to enable natural voice interaction in smart homes, with a specific focus on European Portuguese.

The system utilizes a modular Multi-Agent Architecture where a central Orchestrator uses an LLM to route user requests to specialized agents (Device Control, Weather, Reminders, and Memory). This allows for complex reasoning, context retention, and precise tool execution.

The assistant follows a distributed architecture (Smart Speaker Client + GPU Inference Server):

• LLM Engine: Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct (Quantized) served via vLLM.
• Speech-to-Text: OpenAI Whisper (Fine-tuned for Portuguese).
• Text-to-Speech: Piper TTS (with custom voice cloning).
• Wake Word & VAD: openWakeWord & Silero VAD.
• Backend: Python, FastAPI, and Eclipse Ditto for IoT device management.
• Hardware: Raspberry Pi (Client) and NVIDIA H200 (Server).

Pedro Miguel Castilho Martins