Biomechanical models of speech articulators to study speech motor control

The methodology developed in our research group to design biomechanical models of the speech articulators is shortly explained. Then, results obtained at different stages of our work, with models having various degrees of realism, are presented, which illustrate how these models can be used to better understand speech motor control. We consider more specifically examples where biomechanics informs us about the trajectory shapes, the relations between velocity and trajectory shape, the relations between motor control accuracy and acoustic variability, and the influence of dynamical properties on the shaping of soft speech articulators.