Development of an anthropomorphic head-eye system for a humanoid robot-realization of human-like head-eye motion using eyelids adjusting to brightness

Abstract

In this study the authors have been developing anthropomorphic head-eye robots, in order to elucidate the human vision system from an engineering point of view, and to develop a new human-friendly communication system. We developed an anthropomorphic head-eye robot "WE-3R" (Waseda Eye No.3 Refined) as a human-friendly head-eye subsystem of a humanoid robot "Hadaly-2". WE-3R has eyelids as hardware, while the functions of retina (adaptation) and iris (adjustment of the pupil diameter) are realized as software so WE-3R can adjust to brightness. The system can pursue objects in 3 dimensional space with adjusting to the brightness in a human-like manner that can be considered important for smooth and natural human-robot interaction.