Take a Look, it's in a Book, a Reading Robot

Download PDF
Open Webpage

Paige Tuttösí, Shivam Mehta, Zachary Syvenky, Bermet Burkanova, Mohammed Hfsafsti, Yue Wang, H. Henny Yeung, Gustav Eje Henter, Jean-Julien Aucouturier, Angelica Lim

Published: 2025, Last Modified: 05 Nov 2025HRI 2025EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: We demonstrate EmojiVoice, a free, customizable text-to-speech (TTS) toolkit for expressive speech on social robots. We demonstrate our voices through storytelling. This task is aimed to be deployed in classrooms, or libraries where the robot can read a story out loud to children. Moreover, we introduce adaptive clarity to to noisy environments and those with reduced comprehension ability. This storytelling robot voice allows us to demonstrate how, using our light weight and customizable TTS, we are able to have a voice that is expressive, engaging, clear and socially appropriate for the task, improving interactions with and perceptions of social robots.