Task constraints on robot realism: the case of talking heads

Sophisticated "talking head" systems have been developed and applied to a broad range of tasks. These tasks generally depend on human interaction, which may be influenced by the type and degree of realism portrayed by the robotic system. The thesis of this paper is that achieving ideal robot realism is task dependent and cannot be equated with maximal realism of a single kind. We discuss this issue in terms of our experience designing talking head animation systems for investigation of the production and perception of multimodal (auditory and visual) speech.