Development of face robot to express the individual face by optimizing the facial features

Abstract

Personal robots, which are expected to become popular in future, are required to be active in joint work and community life with humans. Therefore, we have been developing new mechanisms and functions for a humanoid robot with the ability to communicate with humans in a human-like manner. During human communication, humans distinguish individuals by facial features such as silhouette, position and the shape of each part, and gauge mental state based on facial expressions. Many researchers have developed robots that can express their emotions using facial expressions. However, a robot that can change individual facial aspects has not yet been researched. We consider it important for a personal robot to express not only its emotions but faces which appeal to a partner. Therefore, we developed a face robot WD-(Waseda-Docomo face robot No-1) that expresses various faces by changing the facial feature-points. In this study, a mask of the average face was made in order to express complicated shapes with small control points. The position, number and movable range of feature-points were optimized. In addition, we developed 3-DOFs drive unit and controlled each feature-point, not at a point but on a plane