Towards New Human-Humanoid Communication: Listening During Speaking by Using Ultrasonic Directional Speaker

This paper presents a new human-humanoid communication system by using a directional speaker. The directional speaker produces directional sound beams by using intermodulation of ultrasonic sound beams and non linearity in air. This technology solves problems and brings new ways of human-humanoid communication as follows: 1) A humanoid can recognize human speeches during speaking because a microphone installed in the humanoid does not capture self voices played by the directional speaker. 2) A humanoid can speak to a specific person as if it whispers. The directional speaker is installed at the position of the mouth of the humanoid. Preliminary experiments show the efficiency of the directional speaker to realize the above two functions.