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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Zhang, Gang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17183
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author Zhang, Gang
author_facet Zhang, Gang
contents We present an innovative end-to-end framework for synthesizing semantically meaningful co-speech gestures and deploying them in real-time on a humanoid robot. This system addresses the challenge of creating natural, expressive non-verbal communication for robots by integrating advanced gesture generation techniques with robust physical control. Our core innovation lies in the meticulous integration of a semantics-aware gesture synthesis module, which derives expressive reference motions from speech input by leveraging a generative retrieval mechanism based on large language models (LLMs) and an autoregressive Motion-GPT model. This is coupled with a high-fidelity imitation learning control policy, the MotionTracker, which enables the Unitree G1 humanoid robot to execute these complex motions dynamically and maintain balance. To ensure feasibility, we employ a robust General Motion Retargeting (GMR) method to bridge the embodiment gap between human motion data and the robot platform. Through comprehensive evaluation, we demonstrate that our combined system produces semantically appropriate and rhythmically coherent gestures that are accurately tracked and executed by the physical robot. To our knowledge, this work represents a significant step toward general real-world use by providing a complete pipeline for automatic, semantic-aware, co-speech gesture generation and synchronized real-time physical deployment on a humanoid robot.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_17183
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Semantic Co-Speech Gesture Synthesis and Real-Time Control for Humanoid Robots
Zhang, Gang
Robotics
We present an innovative end-to-end framework for synthesizing semantically meaningful co-speech gestures and deploying them in real-time on a humanoid robot. This system addresses the challenge of creating natural, expressive non-verbal communication for robots by integrating advanced gesture generation techniques with robust physical control. Our core innovation lies in the meticulous integration of a semantics-aware gesture synthesis module, which derives expressive reference motions from speech input by leveraging a generative retrieval mechanism based on large language models (LLMs) and an autoregressive Motion-GPT model. This is coupled with a high-fidelity imitation learning control policy, the MotionTracker, which enables the Unitree G1 humanoid robot to execute these complex motions dynamically and maintain balance. To ensure feasibility, we employ a robust General Motion Retargeting (GMR) method to bridge the embodiment gap between human motion data and the robot platform. Through comprehensive evaluation, we demonstrate that our combined system produces semantically appropriate and rhythmically coherent gestures that are accurately tracked and executed by the physical robot. To our knowledge, this work represents a significant step toward general real-world use by providing a complete pipeline for automatic, semantic-aware, co-speech gesture generation and synchronized real-time physical deployment on a humanoid robot.
title Semantic Co-Speech Gesture Synthesis and Real-Time Control for Humanoid Robots
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17183