This mechanical talking robot mouth, developed by the Sawada Group at Kagawa University, features speech organs which imitate a humans.The robots mouth and tongue are made from silicone rubber, and to enhance the sound that is made, several types of silicone were blended together.The inside of the nose is made of plaster, which give it similar characteristics to the human nose, which consists of bone and membranes.One special feature of this robot is that it can learn through auditory feedback. It listens to the sound it is making through a microphone, and then determines by itself what motions will make it sound more human.Professor Sawada has been doing this research for over a decade. He says the next step to make it’s voice more like a human’s will be to add teeth, so it can produce what are called fricative consonants, such as ‘f’ and ‘s’.
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