On the Use of the Humanoid Bioloid System for Robot-Assisted Transcription of Mexican Spanish Speech

Abstract

Within the context of service robotics (SR), the development of assistive technologies has become an important research field. However, the accomplishment of assistive tasks requires precise and fine control of the mechanic systems that integrate the robotic entity. Among the most challenging tasks in robot control, the handwriting task (transcription) is of particular interest due to the fine control required to draw single and multiple alphabet characters to express words and sentences. For language learning activities, robot-assisted speech transcription can motivate the student to practice pronunciation and writing tasks in a dynamic environment. Hence, this paper is aimed to provide the techniques and models to accomplish accurate robot-assisted transcription of Spanish speech. The transcriptor is integrated by a multi-user speech recognizer for continuous speech and the kinematic models for the Mexican Spanish alphabet characters. The Bioloid system with the standard humanoid configuration and no special modifications or tools was considered for implementation. Particularly, the proposed transcriptor could perform the handwriting task with the Bioloid’s two two DOF (degrees-of-freedom) arms. This enabled writing of one-line short and long sentences with small alphabet characters (width <1.0 cm). It is expected that the technique and models that integrate the transcriptor can provide support for the development of robot-assisted language learning activities for children and young adults.