Designing nonverbal utterances by nonhuman characters : How clearly can emotions and characteristics be conveyed?

Abstract: This research seeks to explore the concept of voice design, specifically voice design for non-human characters that do not communicate using words. The idea was to mimic the vocal contours of human non-verbal vocal expression with a synthesizer to achieve emotional clarity, as well as make it sound less like a machine and more like a fleshed-out character. The background investigates how humans can communicate emotions with non-verbal vocal expressions along with principles for sound design for Human-Robot interaction and methods for voice design/processing in film.  This to build an idea on how to proceed when designing a non-verbal character voice. A listening test was conducted where participants would rate valence and energy levels in emotional utterances made by humans and emotional utterances that had been created using a synthesizer. As well as provide insight on what type of character could be creating the sounds made with the synthesizer. The results suggest that although the synthesized sounds lacked emotional clarity, they were still enough to give the participants an idea of a character.