Voice puppetry: Towards conversational hriwoz experiments with synthesised voices

Abstract

In order to research conversational factors in robot design the use of Wizard of Oz (WoZ) experiments, where an experimenter plays the part of the robot, are common. However, for conversational systems using a synthetic voice, it is extremely difficult for the experimenter to choose open domain content and enter it quickly enough to retain conversational flow. In this demonstration we show how voice puppetry can be used to control a neural TTS system in almost real time. The demo hopes to explore the limitations and possibilities of such a system for controlling a robot's synthetic voice in conversational interaction.