02443nas a2200181   4500000000100000008004100001260001100042100001500053700001200068700001500080700001400095700001100109700001500120245015000135300001200285520194200297020002202239                                       d  bICACHI1 aHanxuan Li1 aYu Peng1 aZhihao Yao1 aQirui Sun1 aYao Lu1 aHaipeng Mi00aRobotic Xiangsheng Theater: Designing Audio-Animatronics with Cartoon-Style Facial Expression for Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition  a331-3433 aIntangible Cultural Heritages (ICHs) of China span a wide range from handcrafts to folk performing arts. Although a variety of digital technologies are brought to support the inheritance and dissemination of ICHs in medias and museums, many technologies focus on video recording and displaying and lack of emerging experiences. As one of the famous Chinese ICHs, Xiangsheng aka Crosstalk, is a folk stand-up comedy art with unique performing styles. It emphasizes facial and voice expressions. In this study, we propose a design method of robotic Xiangsheng theater, in which two audio-animatronics actors - a wisecracker(dou gen) and a straight man(peng gen) - perform traditional Xiangsheng art automatically. We explored cartoon-style animatronics character design with considerations of cultural and scenic factors, and implemented two audio-animatronics robots with a height of 1.5 meters and DOFs of 15 for each. Moving parts, like eyebrows and cheeks, are attached to enhance facial expressions of robot actors. Pre-recorded voice audio by professional human actors are highly expressive, requiring corresponding facial expressions with high expressiveness and accurate timing and tempo. In addition, traditional performing skills of Xiangsheng require unique treats on presentations, such as exaggeration of facial expression, variation of tempo or logic semantics, etc. We propose a number of design schemes for robot actors, in accordance to different Xiangsheng performing skills. We conducted a pilot study of expert interviews to evaluate the performance of proposed design schemes. Based on these design considerations, we built an actual robotic Xiangsheng theater in an ICH museum of China. Robot actors will perform a 20 mins long Xiangsheng comedy twice everyday to the public visitors. We conducted observation studies and interviews of the audience. Findings show a positive result for the robotic Xiangsheng theater.  a979-8-4007-1645-4