Articulatory robotics*

Speech is a spatiotemporally coordinated structure of constriction actions at discrete articulators such as lips, tongue tip, tongue body, velum, and glottis. Like other human movements (e.g., reaching), each action as a linguistic task is completed by a synergy of involved basic elements (e.g., bone, muscle, neural system). This paper discusses how speech tasks are dynamically related to joints as one of the basic elements in terms of robotics of speech production. Further this introduction of robotics to speech sciences will hopefully deepen our understanding of how speech is produced and provide a solid foundation to developing a physical talking machine.