A face robot able to recognize and produce facial expression

Abstract

We are attempting to introduce a 3-dimensional realistic human-like animate face robot to interactive communication modality. The face robot can recognize human facial expressions as well as produce realistic facial expressions. For the face robot to communicate interactively, we propose a new concept of "Active Human Interface"; and we investigate the performance of real-time recognition of facial expressions by neural network (NN) and the expressionability of facial messages on the face robot. We find that the NN recognition of facial expressions and face robot's performance in generating facial expressions are of almost same level as that in humans. This implies a high potential for the animate face robot to undertake interactive communication with human.