Hi,

I'm looking to purchase microphones that would funtion on a robot that is in a public enviroment using pocketsphinx. Please let me know of any suggestions regarding pickup patterns or other details that are important.

Thanks

Single microphone does not really matter since they all have more or less same properties.

If you want to operate in public environment you need a microphone array like Kinect, beside Kinect itself you can check 

this:

https://sourceforge.net/p/manyears/wiki/Main_Page/

or this:

http://www.hark.jp/wiki.cgi?page=SupportedHardware

Thanks for the quick reply!

I'm not sure if a digital voice recorder would work for your requirements, but it might be worth checking out. Look at the Philips DPM8000, it would be best for noisy environments.