@inproceedings {PUBA291,
	title = {Closing the Loop: Towards Tightly Synchronized Robot Gesture and Speech},
	author = {Maha Salem AND Stefan Kopp AND Frank Joublin},
	year = {2013},
	month = {October},
	abstract = {To engage in natural interactions with humans, social robots should produce speech-accompanying non-verbal behaviors such as hand and arm gestures. Given the special constraints imposed by the physical properties of a humanoid robot, successful multimodal synchronization is difficult to achieve. Previous work focusing on the production of communicative robot behavior has not sufficiently addressed the challenge of speech-gesture synchrony. Introducing the first closed-loop approach to speech and gesture generation for humanoid robots, we propose a novel multimodal scheduler that comprises two features to improve the synchronization process. First, the scheduler integrates an experimentally fitted forward model at the behavior planning stage to provide a more accurate estimation of the robot{\textquoteright}s gesture preparation time. Second, the model incorporates a feedback-based adaptation mechanism which allows for an on-line adjustment of the synchronization of the two modalities during execution. Technical results obtained with the implemented scheduler are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach; empirical results from an evaluation study are further discussed to highlight the implications of the present work.},
	publisher = {Springer},
	booktitle = {International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR)}
}