A Toolkit for Exploring the Role of Voice in Human-Robot Interaction

As part of the "Survivor Buddy" project, we have created an open source speech translator toolkit which allows written or spoken word from multiple independent controllers to be translated into either a single synthetic voice, synthetic voices for each controller, orunchanged natural voice of each controller. The human controllers can work via the internet or be physically co-located with the Survivor Buddy robot. The toolkit is expected to be of use for exploring voice in general human-robot interaction. The Survivor Buddy project is motivated by our prior work which suggests that a trapped victim of a disaster, or other human who is dependent, will treat a rescue robot as a social medium and that the choice of robotic voice will be important. The robot will be both a medium to the "outside" world and a local, independent entity devoted to the victim Figure 1: View from the Survivor Buddy webcam with subpicture (e.g., a buddy).