Articulatory Reproduction of Voices of Hearing-Impaired by a Talking Robot

A talking and singing robot which adaptively learns the vocalization skill by an auditory feedback learning is being developed. The robot consists of motor- controlled vocal organs such as vocal cords, a vocal tract and a nasal cavity to generate a natural voice imitating a human vocalization. The robot is applied to the training system of speech articulation for the hearing-impaired people, because the robot is able to reproduce their vocalization and to teach them how it is improved to generate clear speech. The paper briefly introduces the mechanical construction of the robot and how it autonomously acquires the vocalization skill in the auditory feedback learning by listening to human speech. Then the training system is described, together with the evaluation of the speech training by auditory impaired people.