Development of a talking robot

The vocal movement isn't only a movement of the vocal organs. It is also a movement that produces acoustic signals received by hearing as linguistic information through hydroacoustic phenomena along with the formation of the vocal way. The purpose of this research is to make clear human vocal mechanism from the view of engineering by reproducing the vocal movement using a robot, and to make the dynamic model. Therefore, the authors developed an anthropomorphic talking robot, WT-1 (Waseda Talker-No.1) in 1999. It simulates human voice movement, and has articulators (the 4-DOF lips, 1-DOF teeth, 6-DOF tongue, nasal cavity and 1-DOF soft palate) and the vocal organs (the 1-DOF vocal cords, 1-DOF lungs); Total DOF of the robot is 14.