08-09-2017, 04:59 PM
A talking and singing robot that has mechanical organs equivalent to the human vocal system is being developed based on a mechatronics technology under the control of regeneration. While various forms of vocal sound production have been actively studied so far, it is considered that a mechanical construction of the vocal system advantageously realizes natural vocalization with its fluid dynamics. The motors are used for the manipulation of the mechanical system. The robot adaptively learns the relationships between the motor control parameters and the generated vocal sounds using an auditory feedback learning with neural networks and sings a song imitating a human vocalization. This article presents the construction of the talking robot and its sung interpretation, along with the adaptive control for the learning of tone and phoneme. The robot generates vocal sounds and consonants of different tones dynamically controlling the vocal cords, vocal tract and nasal cavity.