3D Talking-Head Interface to Voice-Interactive Services on Mobile Phones

This paper presents a novel framework for easy creation of interactive, platform-independent voice-services with an animated 3D talking-head interface, on mobile phones. The Framework supports automated multi-modal interaction using speech and 3D graphics. The difficulty of synchronizing the audio stream to the animation is examined and alternatives for distributed network control of the animation and application logic is discussed. The ability of modern mobile devices to handle such applications is documented and it is shown that the power consumption trade-off of rendering on the mobile phone versus streaming from the server favors the phone. The presented tools will empower developers and researchers in future research and usability studies in the area of mobile talking-head applications (Figure 1). These may be used for example in entertainment, commerce, health care or education.