As nearly 55% of information is transferred by facial expressions, facial expression robot take an important role in human-robot interaction. This paper introduces the development and experiments of facial expression robot SHFR-III. The robot's facial system is consist of eyebrow mechanism, eyeball mechanism, lid mechanism and jaw mechanism. Neck mechanism and its kinematic analysis is also done to make robot's expression more vivid. Experiment based on head-neck coordination and motion joining is also presented. Last, summary and further research plan are attached.

Facial expression on robot SHFR-III based on head-neck coordination

Expressing Emotions in Social Robotics - A Schematic Overview Concerning the Mechatronics Aspects and Design Concepts

By analysing the formation mechanism of human facial expressions and summary of existing research about facial expression robot, the paper summarized the facial expression robot, developed three technical difficulties, and proposed the improvements according to the technical difficulties. Based on the above, the paper presented one facial robot with eight facial expressions of basic emotions. In mechanical part, the mechanical structure with 20 degrees of freedom is designed; in control part, SSC32 V2 is used to control 20 servo coordination movements; in simulation modelling part, a special silicon rubber material is developed and the soft part of material is used to as the skin of facial expression robot. The facial expression of robot substantially increased the extent of such robot simulation.

Research and Realization of Facial Expression Robot

Realistic eye motion of humanoid robots can significantly improve the efficiency of information exchange between humans and robots. Up to now, humanoid robots are mainly driven by motors. On the other hand, with mechanisms and performances close to the natural muscle, the dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) has been emerging technology for actuating the humanoid robot. While both actuators can drive the eyeball to achieve human-like movement, little work has been done on comparing their performance quantitatively. To compare these two actuators utilized in humanoid robots, we made artificial eyes with motors and DEA respectively. In this paper, we compare the artificial eyes of these two actuators in terms of structure, working principle, equipment, motion response, efficiency and drive mode, etc. The result describes the characteristics of the two actuators and provides a basis for selection for various application scenarios.

Performance of Actuators for Facial Robot: A Comparison Study Between Electric Motor and Dielectric Elastomer Actuator

Realistic eye motion of humanoid robots can significantly improve the efficiency of information exchange between humans and robots. Up to now, humanoid robots are mainly driven by motors. On the other hand, with mechanisms and performances close to the natural muscle, the dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) has been emerging technology for actuating the humanoid robot. While both actuators can drive the eyeball to achieve human-like movement, little work has been done on comparing their performance quantitatively. To compare these two actuators utilized in humanoid robots, we made artificial eyes with motors and DEA respectively. In this paper, we compare the artificial eyes of these two actuators in terms of structure, working principle, equipment, motion response, efficiency and drive mode, etc. The result describes the characteristics of the two actuators and provides a basis for selection for various application scenarios. 

This paper proposes a method of lip shape coordination with speech in the facial expression robot system ldquoH&Frobot-IIIrdquo. The proposed method can model the talking robotpsilas lip shape using visual speech system, which includes three modules: speech recognition, lip shape recognition and lip pose actuator. In the lip shape recognition module, a viseme representation method is proposed for synthesising the human visual speech. To analyze the robotpsilas lip shape, lip shape model is developed based on the anatomy and facial action coding system (FACS). When robot speaking, the lip shape coordination with speech can be realized through basic lip shape or the combination of basic lip shape. In the ldquoH&Frobot-IIIrdquo system, the lip shape is realized through slide and guide slot mechanism, which implements the two-way movement of muscle in the lip. Finally, the result of the experiment, which is the lip coordination with speech, is shown. When speaking same word, the lip shape of robot is similarity to that of human.

Zhong Yusheng

Papers

Research and experiment of lip coordination with speech for the humanoid head robot-“H&Frobot-III”