Development of a new human-like talking robot having advanced vocal tract mechanisms

Author

Nishikawa, Kazufumi ; Takanobu, Hideaki ; Mochida, Takemi ; Honda, Masaaki ; Takanishi, Atsuo

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Waseda Univ., Tokyo, Japan

Volume

2

fYear

2003

fDate

27-31 Oct. 2003

Firstpage

1907

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a new talking robot WT-2 that improved on WT-1R and has advanced vocal tract mechanisms for the reproduction of human vocal movement. WT-2 consists lungs, vocal cords, a vocal cavity and nasal cavity; the total DOF is 15. The length of the vocal tract is about 175 mm and is almost the same as that of an adult male. Compared to WT-1 or WT-1R developed previously, WT-2 could utter Japanese vowels more clearly, and produce stops, fricatives and nasal sounds by a new flexible tongue mechanism as well as decrease sound leaks from the tongue except those from the lips or nostrils.

Keywords

natural languages; robots; speech synthesis; DOF; Japanese vowels; WT-1 model; WT-2 model; advanced vocal tract mechanisms; flexible tongue mechanism; human vocal movement; human-like talking robot; nasal cavity; vocal cavity; vocal cords; Human voice; Humanoid robots; Lips; Lungs; Motor drives; Production systems; Speech; Telegraphy; Telephony; Tongue;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2003. (IROS 2003). Proceedings. 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7860-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IROS.2003.1248923

Filename

1248923