Timely attraction of a client and detection of his/her speech message in real noisy conditions are main difficulties at deployment of speech and multimodal interfaces in information kiosks. Combination of sound source localization, voice activity and face detection technologies allowed to determine client mouth coordinates and extract boundaries of speech signal appeared in the kiosk dialogue area. Talking head model based on audio-visual speech synthesis immediately greets the client, when her face is captured in the video-monitoring area, in order to attract him/her to the information service before leaving the interaction area. Client’s face tracking is also used for turning the talking head in direction to the client that significantly improves the naturalness of interaction. The developed infokiosk set in the institute hall provides information about structure and staff of laboratories. Statistics of human-kiosk interaction is accumulated within last six months in 2009.
