Development of a talking robot with vocal cords and lips having human-like biological structures

Abstract

We have developed a new talking robot, WT-5 (Waseda Talker No. 5), having novel vocal cords and lips based on human biological structures. The vocal cords are made from the thermoplastic rubber "Septon", available from Kuraray Co. Ltd, which has a similar elasticity to human tissue. The vocal cord model was constructed with a similar structure to the biological structure of the human vocal cords. The vocal cords vibrated like those of a human. The new lips were able to attain a large deformation in a similar manner to human lips, without the leakage of air. This allowed clear pronunciation of vowels. With these new mechanisms, the robot could reproduce human speech in a more biological manner and could produce voices closer to those of a human.