Gesture2Vec: Clustering Gestures using Representation Learning Methods for Co-speech Gesture Generation

Payam Jome Yazdian, Mo Chen, Angelica Lim

Keywords: representation learning, gesture generation, vector quantization, machine translation

Abstract: Co-speech gestures are a principal component in conveying messages and enhancing interaction experiences between humans. Similarly, the co-speech gesture is a key ingredient in human-agent interaction including both virtual agents and robots. Existing machine learning approaches have yielded only marginal success in learning speech-to-motion at the frame level. Current methods generate repetitive gesture sequences that lack appropriateness with respect to the speech context. In this paper, we propose a Gesture2Vec model using representation learning methods to learn the relationship between semantic features and corresponding gestures. We propose a vector-quantized variational autoencoder structure as well as training techniques to learn a rigorous representation of gesture sequences. Furthermore, we use a machine translation model that takes input text and translates it into a discrete sequence of associated gesture chunks in the learned gesture space. Ultimately, we use translated quantized gestures from the input text as an input to the autoencoder’s decoder to produce gesture sequences. The resulting gestures can be applied to both virtual agents and humanoid robots. Subjective and objective evaluations confirm the success of our approach in terms of appropriateness, human-likeness, and diversity.

One-sentence Summary: In this paper, we propose a Gesture2Vec model using representation learning methods to learn the relationship between semantic features and corresponding gestures.