A robotic auditory system for imitating human listening behavior

In the vocal communication, we employ not only the speech and auditory ability but also the body actions such as gestures and gaze to react to the speech. For example, a human nods to a speaker for an agreement, and makes eye contact during the conversation. The purpose of this study is to realize a human-like auditory system using a robotic arm, which listens to a human voice like a human, and interacts with human speakers. In this paper, the imitation of human listening behavior for realizing the natural communication between a human and a robot by the robotic auditory system is introduced.