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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Robot. AI
Sec. Human-Robot Interaction
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frobt.2024.1394700

Speaking Out For Speakers: A Guide for and Analysis of Robot Speaker Design

Provisionally accepted
  • Oregon State University, Corvallis, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Despite sound being a promising modality of communication in robotics (possessing, for example, the ability to improve people's perceptions of robots and help localize robotic systems in space), its facilitator, speakers, are a seldom-explored topic of study in robotics literature. To address this gap, we conducted three explorations into physical speaker design that identified what current robot speakers lack and potential remedies, low-level design improvements, and post hoc hardware additions. Further, we detail and explore the application of speakers on three different robotic platforms (including one industrial robot used for construction), the last evaluation of which involved an empirical study (N = 21) that sought to better understand the implications associated with poor-quality speakers in a mock service robotics context. Our results suggest that greater internal cavity volume is a key strength in speaker design. We also observed greater effects of the presence (vs. absence) of a service robot voice compared to other factors. This work can inform the process of creating custom speakers for robots and augmenting current robotic systems with new speaker additions (whether commercial or custom, and across use contexts from construction to service). In particular, the work can help to guide roboticists who may be unfamiliar with nuanced audio engineering techniques and designers who seek to improve robotics platform standards with human interlocutors in mind.

    Keywords: robot sound, Speakers, Speaker design, human-robot interaction, speaker analysis

    Received: 02 Mar 2024; Accepted: 30 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Nwagwu, Schneider, Phelps, Zhang and Fitter. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Nnamdi Nwagwu, Oregon State University, Corvallis, United States
    Naomi T. Fitter, Oregon State University, Corvallis, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.