Marcel Heisler
56th International Symposium on Robotics (ISR Europe)
The 56th International Symposium on Robotics (ISR Europe) took place this year in Stuttgart. Our PhD student Marcel Heisler presented the paper: An Android Robot Head as Embodied Conversational Agent.
The symposium took place at the Maritim Hotel and the next door ISW facilities. Apart from keynotes, paper presentations and a poster session about the latest advancements and upcoming trends in robotics, the program included two lab tours: at ISW and at Fraunhofer IPA. Additionally, there was an exhibition taking place at the symposium, where Christian Becker-Asano and Marcel Heisler showcased one of the IAAI’s android robot heads.
Abstract
This paper describes, how current Machine Learning (ML) techniques combined with simple rule-based animation routines make an android robot head an embodied conversational agent with ChatGPT as its core component. The android robot head is described, technical details are given of how lip-sync animation is being achieved, and general software design decisions are presented. A public presentation of the system revealed improvement opportunities that are reported and that lead our iterative implementation approach.
Authors: Marcel Heisler, Christian Becker-Asano
