Robustesse de la RAP à la parole expressive âgée vs. typique : contexte de commandes dans un habitat intelligent

International audienceLa commande vocale a été identifiée comme un mode d’interaction très intéressant dans l’habitat intelligent, qu’elle soit adressée directement à l’habitat ou à une interface robotique, aussi bien en ce qui concerne le confort que dans le domaine de l’assistance aux personnes âgées. Cependant, même lorsque le sujet peut contrôler sa production pour respecter strictement une référence imposée, dans le contexte naturel de l’usage quotidien « naturel » les productions vocales sont inévitablement souvent expressives. Dans cet article, à partir d’un corpus de parole émue actée/neutre collecté par élicitation,nous observons une chute significative de performance d’un système de RAP générique pour la parole émue par rapport à la voix neutre et nous évaluons le gain intéressant apporté par une adaptation du système. Nous concluons sur la nécessité de prendre en compte cette adaptationdans le développement d’un système vocal destiné à l’assistance aux personnes

A study on the Lombard Effect in telepresence robotics

In this study, we present a new experiment in order to study the Lombard effect in telepresence robotics. In this experiment, one person talks with a robot controled remotely by someone in a different room. The remote pilot (R) is immersed in both environments, while the local interlocutor (L) interacts directly with the robot. In this context, the position of the noise source, in the remote or in the local room, may modify the subjects' voice adaptations. In order to study in details this phenomenon, we propose four particular conditions: no added noise, noise in room R heard only by R, virtual noise in room L heard only by R, and noise in room L heard by both R and L. We measured the variations of maximum intensity in order to quantify the Lombard effect. Our results show that there is indeed a modification of voice intensity in all noisy conditions. However, the amplitude of this modification varies depending on the condition

Le concept de robot

Les humains ne peuvent pas vivre sans liens socio-affectifs : la robotique sociale est-elle une illusion du lien vivant qui tente vainement de réparer une détérioration du tissu des liens socio-affectifs entre humains et entre humains et vivants non humains, ou peut-elle être un outil pour détecter notre fragilité relationnelle et éclairer éthiquement l’état de notre corps social ?Humans cannot live without social-emotional bonds : is social robotics an illusion of the living bond that vainly attempts to repair a deterioration of the fabric of social-emotional bonds between humans and between humans and living non-humans, or can it be a tool to detect our relational fragility and ethically enlighten the state of our social body 

Towards a model of "social touch'' for ubiquitous communication

One of the challenges of telepresence robotics is to provide ubiquitous social-interpersonalimmersion. In order to achieve this, there is a need to understand and model the factors that wouldallow the users to control the transmission of their vocal productions, and to give them perception,proprioception and inter-proprioception of this control. This model for transferring sociallyembodied vocal distance should take into account all parameters involved in the social-interpersonaleffect of vocal productions, especially intensity. It should also integrate the background informationwhich is relevant for the speakers to express their intentions. In this paper, we present a firstexperiment for measuring, analyzing and modeling how human beings perceive the distance to aninterlocutor, depending on socio-affective variations in the vocal productions of this interlocutor.These results will be the reference for the models which will be implanted in our telepresence robot:Robair Social Touch.Comment: in French languag

The EEE corpus: socio-affective "glue" cues in elderly-robot interactions in a Smart Home with the EmOz platform

International audienceThe aim of this preliminary study of feasibility is to give a glance at interactions in a Smart Home prototype between the elderly and a companion robot that is having some socio-affective language primitives as the only vector of communication. The paper particularly focuses on the methodology and the scenario made to collect a spontaneous corpus of human-robot interactions. Through a Wizard of Oz platform (EmOz), which was specifically developed for this issue, a robot is introduced as an intermediary between the technological environment and some elderly who have to give vocal commands to the robot to control the Smart Home. The robot vocal productions increases progressively by adding prosodic levels: (1) no speech, (2) pure prosodic mouth noises supposed to be the "glue's" tools, (3) lexicons with supposed "glue" prosody and (4) subject's commands imitations with supposed "glue" prosody. The elderly subjects' speech behaviours confirm the hypothesis that the socio-affective "glue" effect increase towards the prosodic levels, especially for socio-isolated people. The actual corpus is still on recording process and is motivated to collect data from socio-isolated elderly in real need

The EEE corpus: socio-affective "glue" cues in elderly-robot interactions in a Smart Home with the EmOz platform

International audienceThe aim of this preliminary study of feasibility is to give a glance at interactions in a Smart Home prototype between the elderly and a companion robot that is having some socio-affective language primitives as the only vector of communication. The paper particularly focuses on the methodology and the scenario made to collect a spontaneous corpus of human-robot interactions. Through a Wizard of Oz platform (EmOz), which was specifically developed for this issue, a robot is introduced as an intermediary between the technological environment and some elderly who have to give vocal commands to the robot to control the Smart Home. The robot vocal productions increases progressively by adding prosodic levels: (1) no speech, (2) pure prosodic mouth noises supposed to be the "glue's" tools, (3) lexicons with supposed "glue" prosody and (4) subject's commands imitations with supposed "glue" prosody. The elderly subjects' speech behaviours confirm the hypothesis that the socio-affective "glue" effect increase towards the prosodic levels, especially for socio-isolated people. The actual corpus is still on recording process and is motivated to collect data from socio-isolated elderly in real need

Auditory communication in domestic dogs: vocal signalling in the extended social environment of a companion animal

Domestic dogs produce a range of vocalisations, including barks, growls, and whimpers, which are shared with other canid species. The source–filter model of vocal production can be used as a theoretical and applied framework to explain how and why the acoustic properties of some vocalisations are constrained by physical characteristics of the caller, whereas others are more dynamic, influenced by transient states such as arousal or motivation. This chapter thus reviews how and why particular call types are produced to transmit specific types of information, and how such information may be perceived by receivers. As domestication is thought to have caused a divergence in the vocal behaviour of dogs as compared to the ancestral wolf, evidence of both dog–human and human–dog communication is considered. Overall, it is clear that domestic dogs have the potential to acoustically broadcast a range of information, which is available to conspecific and human receivers. Moreover, dogs are highly attentive to human speech and are able to extract speaker identity, emotional state, and even some types of semantic information