Mechanical construction of a human vocal system for singing voice production

Various ways of vocal sound production are being actively studied. We are c onstructing a phonetic machine with a vocal chord and a vocal tract based o n mechatronics technology. Mechanical construction of a human vocal system is considered to generate natural voice so that it can be advantageously ap plied to singing voice production. In voice generation, analysis and mechan ical realization of the behaviors of the vocal chords and vocal tract are r equired. Furthermore. the fluid mechanical system is less stable, thus maki ng control more difficult. Several motors are employed to manipulate the me chanical vocal system. Mappings between motor positions and the produced vo cal sounds are automatically established in the learning phase. In the sing ing performance, the system is able to sing while vocal pitches and phoneme s are adaptively controlled by an auditory feedback process. This paper pre sents the latest mechanisms of our mechanical vocal system together with ad aptive tuning algorithms of the physical mechanism with an auditory system.