Effects of a speech-driven embodied interactive actor "InterActor" on talker\´s speech characteristics

A speech-driven embodied interactive actor called InterActor with both functions of speaker and listener is developed for activating human interaction and communication by generating expressive actions and motions coherently related to speech input. InterActor is the electronic media version of the physical interaction robot called InterRobot for robot-mediated communication support, which sets free from the hardware restriction. This paper demonstrates the effects of InterActor on interaction in human speech input by the analysis of speech temporal parameters. It is found that speech duration increases because of the increase of total silence duration and the number of silent parts in human-to-InterActor speech input, which is the advantage of real time processing for word-spotting and speech recognition. Interaction with InterActor is also highly evaluated in smoothness, enjoyment and preference by sensory evaluation.