Effects of Speech-Driven Embodied Entrainment Character "InterActor" on Talker's Speech

Abstract

A speech-driven embodied entrainment character called “InterActor” with both functions of speaker and listener has been developed for activating human interaction by generating the whole body motions such as nodding, blinking and the actions of head, arms and waist coherently related to speech input. This paper demonstrates the effects of InterActor on interaction in human speech input by the analysis of speech temporal parameters. It is found that speech duration increases and speech activity decreases because of the increase of total silence duration and the number of silence parts in human-to-InterActor speech input, which is the advantage of real time processing for speech recognition and so forth. Interaction with InterActor is also highly evaluated in smoothness, enjoyment and preference by sensory evaluation.