The Animatronic
Tongue and Vocal Tract Model
The regions of the model that imitate hard and soft palate, velum, and the back wall of the pharynx were designed as a single piece. The necessary data about the exact anatomy of this region was kindly provided by Pierre Badin and Antoine Serrurier, CNRS, Grenoble, France.
The
original 3D model was
modified to fit AnTon's skull, and to make physical reproduction
by 3D printing possible. Both a directly printable positive as well as
a
mould for making multiple
palates were created.
The palate and pharynx as a single piece. Data kindly provided by Pierre Badin, CNRS, Grenoble, France.
I would like to thank Unimatic for printing the 3D palate model using their latest rapid prototyping technology. The original 3D print was used to cast a silicone replica, using the same soft silicone as used in the tongue.
Left: the original print of the palate model; right: the silicone cast being attached to AnTon's skull (not to scale).
Related literature:
Badin, P. and Serrurier, A.: Three-dimensional linear modeling of tongue: Articulatory data and models, In Proceedings of the 7th International Seminar on Speech Production, ISSP7, eds. H. Yehia, D. Demolin and R. Laboissire, Ubatuba, SP, Brazil, UFMG, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, pp. 395–402, 2007.
Serrurier, A. and Badin, P.: A Three-Dimensional Linear Articulatory Model of Velum Based on MRI Data, In Proceedings of Interspeech 2005, Lisbon, Portugal, pp 2161--2164, 2005.