Emotive qualities in lip-synchronized robot speech

This paper explores the expression of emotion in synthesized speech for an anthropomorphic robot. We have adapted several key emotional correlates of human speech to the robot's speech synthesizer to allow the robot to speak in either an angry, calm, disgusted, fearful, happy, sad or surprised manner. We have evaluated our approach thorough acoustic analysis of the speech patterns for each vocal affect and have studied how well human subjects perceive the intended affect. The robot lip synchronizes in real-time to enhance the delivery of its expressive utterances.     

A Comparative Synchronizers Study of a Class of PSAM Frame

Pilot symbol assisted modulation (PSAM) is amethod to reduce the effects of fading in mobilecommunications by periodically inserting knowing symbolsin the data stream. The receiver uses the pilot symbols to estimate channel state information. In orderto do this, the pilot symbols must first be located inthe noisy received sequence. This paper investigates theperformance of a class of PSAMs frame synchronizers which have the form of a quadratic correlationfilter and threshold test. Computer simulations are usedto show that these synchronizers can be designed to havea robust performance over a large range of Doppler spreads and SNR, to achieve anarbitrarily high probability of correct acquisition, andto maintain low computational complexity.     

Synchronization control for physics-based collaborative virtual environments with shared haptics

In this paper, we propose a synchronization scheme to achieve a high level of consistency in peer-to-peer-based shared virtual environments (SVEs), as well as to display natural and realistic motions of virtual objects, in collaborative haptic tasks. The synchronization scheme utilizes an advanced feedback controller to compensate for the state error between geographically separated sites with a significant amount of time delay. It is designed using the mathematical model of a two-user SVE manipulating a freely moving object represented as a mass with damping resistance, with a haptic interface. Thanks to feedback control theory of time delay systems, the controller is shown to result in closed-loop stability and is be robust to perturbations in the time delay. Together with the synchronization control, a recovery filter is also designed and integrated so as to preserve the natural behavior of the synchronized object, which is, otherwise, affected by the feedback control action. In addition to verifying the theoretical results, two experiments using real Internet and local area network communications are carried out. These tests clearly support the validity of the analyses and demonstrate the applicability of the synchronization scheme.     

Development of a control system for an omni-directional vehicle with step-climbing ability

This paper proposes a control method for wheels to pass over rough terrain. In our previous work, we have developed a holonomic mobile mechanism capable of running over steps. The mechanism realizes omni-directional motion on a flat floor and passes over uneven ground in forward and backward directions. The vehicle has seven special wheels with cylindrical free rollers and two passive body axes that can adapt to rough terrain. Seven actuators are located in each wheel; therefore, our vehicle system requires the rotation velocity of each wheel to be coordinated. However, it is difficult to keep such coordination among the wheels — as the vehicle passes over the step, the load applied to the wheel tends to heavy and irregular. Therefore, we propose a new control system for synchronization among the wheels. In this paper, the following two topics are discussed: the load adjustment so as not to exceed the maximum torque of the actuator in some of the wheels and keeping the balance of rotation velocity among the wheels. Our novel control method adjusts the output value by referring to the state of the other wheels. The performance of our system is investigated by means of computer simulations and experiments using our prototype vehicle.     

A Novel EKF-Based Recovery in DS Scheme for DS/CDMA Systems Tracking Code Delay

Classical delay-lock loops (DLL) have beenwidely considered for code synchronization purposes inDS/CDMA systems, although they have not been devised foroperation when channel fading is present. This paper describes a new code synchronizationscheme based on a previously proposed extended Kalmanfilter (EKF) approach. The scheme proposed in this paperis able to operate under low signal-to-interference ratios (SIR), usual at the receiver input incellular CDMA mobile environments, and it outperformsthe behavior of previously proposed EKF-based schemes,which failed in such environments. Performance results under realistic mobile environment conditionsare shown in terms of the mean time to lose lock (MTLL)and the tracking error variance ² for a wide range ofSIR values and under Rayleigh fading. Moreover, the Cramer-Rao lower boundon ² is also computed inorder to validate the results obtained viasimulations.     

Synchronization Architecture for Multimedia Services in Mobile Radio Environments

The management of multimedia teleservices inthird-generation mobile radio environments is achallenging task due to the multicomposite andmultirequirement nature of this kind of traffic.Following the choice of carrying multimedia information onmultiple bearers over the air interface of a wirelesspersonal communication system, and after the selectionof a TDMA-like multiple access protocol based on the bandwidth reservation, the system isrequired to provide for an interstream synchronizationamong components of the multimedia service. This paperpresents an architecture for guaranteeing that temporal relationships among components at thetransmitter side can be maintained, after crossing theair interface, at the receiver side, regardless ofdifferent bearers' delay constraints and delays sufferedin the buffer of the base station. The attentionis focused on a kind of roughsynchronization to be performed on the system MAC leveland refined by higher protocol layers. Static anddynamic priorities concepts are exploited to achieve the targetsynchronization degree among components. Simulationresults, carried out in a case of a video-audioconnection, confirm the effectiveness of the proposedmechanism.