Abstract
A talking and singing robot which has equivalent mechanical organs to human vocal system is being developed based on a mechatronics technology under a feedback control. While various ways of vocal sound production have been actively studied so far, a mechanical construction of the vocal system is considered to advantageously realize natural vocalization with its fluid dynamics. Motors are employed for the manipulation of the mechanical system. The robot adaptively learns the relations between motor control parameters and the generated vocal sounds using an auditory feedback learning with neural networks, and sings a song by mimicking a human vocalization. This paper presents the construction of the talking robot and its singing performance, together with the adaptive control for the pitch and phoneme learning. The robot generates vowel and consonant sounds of different pitches by dynamically controlling the vocal cords, vocal tract and nasal cavity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Hayashi, Y.: Koe To Kotoba No Kagaku, Houmei-do (1979)
Flanagan, J.L.: Speech Analysis Synthesis and Perception. Springer, Heidelberg (1972)
Rodet, X., Benett, G.: Synthesis of the Singing Voice. Current Directions in Computer Music Research, PIT Press (1989)
Hirose, K.: Current Trends and Future Prospects of Speech Synthesis. Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan, 39–45 (1992)
Depalle, P., Garcia, G., Rodet, X.: A Virtual Castrato. In: International Computer Music Conference, pp. 357–360 (1994)
Smith III, J.O.: Viewpoints on the History of Digital Synthesis. In: International Computer Music Conference, pp. 1–10 (1991)
Umeda, N., Teranishi, R.: Phonemic Feature and Vocal Feature -Synthesis of Speech Sounds Using an Acoustic Model of Vocal Tract. Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan 22(4), 195–203 (1966)
Nishikawa, K., Takanobu, H., Mochida, T., Honda, M., Takanishi, A.: Development of a New Human-like Talking Robot Having Advanced Vocal Tract Mechanisms. In: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robot and Systems, pp. 1907–1913 (2003)
Sawada, H., Hashimoto, S.: Adaptive Control of a Vocal Chord and Vocal Tract for Computerized Mechanical Singing Instruments. In: International Computer Music Conference, pp. 444–447 (1996)
Sawada, H., Hashimoto, S.: Mechanical Construction of a Human Vocal System for Singing Voice Production. Advanced Robotics, International Journal of Robotics Society of Japan 13(7), 647–661 (2000)
Sawada, H., Hashimoto, S.: Mechanical Model of Human Vocal System and Its Control with Auditory Feedback. JSME International Journal, Series C 43(3), 645–652 (2000)
Higashimoto, T., Sawada, H.: Vocalization Control of a Mechanical Vocal System under the Auditory Feedback. Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics 14(5), 453–461 (2002)
Higashimoto, T., Sawada, H.: A Mechanical Voice System and its Adaptive Learning for the Mimicry of Human Vocalization. In: IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation, pp. 1040–1045 (2003)
Ishizaka, K., Flanagan, J.L.: Synthesis of Voiced Sounds from a Two-Mass Model of the Vocal Chords. Bell Syst. Tech. J. 50, 1223–1268 (1972)
Higashimoto, T., Sawada, H.: A Mechanical Voice System: Construction of Vocal Cords and its Pitch Control. In: International Conference on Intelligent Technologies, pp. 762–768 (2003)
Sawada, H., Nakamura, M.: Mechanical Voice System and its Singing Performance. In: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 1920–1925 (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Nakamura, M., Sawada, H. (2005). A Talking Robot and Its Singing Skill Acquisition. In: Khosla, R., Howlett, R.J., Jain, L.C. (eds) Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems. KES 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3683. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11553939_127
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11553939_127
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-28896-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31990-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)