Development and Operational Result of Real Environment Speech-oriented Guidance Systems Kita-robo and Kita-Chan

Abstract

Following the real environment spoken-oriented guidance system "Takemaru-kun", which in operation since Nov. 2002 at an entrance of the public center ISTA in Ikoma city, two new spoken guidance systems are developed. They implemented at a railway station in Ikoma city since Mar. 2006. They have different interfaces. One system is named Kita-chan and a conventional desktop system like Takemaru-kun which uses CG agent. The other is Kita-robo (Kitachan robot), which has a robot-like body. Both systems are fundamentally same in their service contains. They can provide information about the station facilities, transfer, sightseeing or institutions around the station and so on, using synthetic speech and the www brousers. All speech input has been recorded. Six months data of them are manually transcribed with labels of age group, gender nad tags related to noise. In this paper, the outline of the systems is introduced and the analysis results of speech database are conducted comparing the two systems. For example, the total number of valid inputs to Kita-chan system during the first six months is 13,463 and that of Kita-robo is 25,297. This numbers indicates the advantege of the robot interface of Kita-robo. The advantage is observed for all age groups.