HEFES: An Hybrid Engine for Facial Expressions Synthesis to control human-like androids and avatars

Abstract

Nowadays advances in robotics and computer science have made possible the development of sociable and attractive robots. A challenging objective of the field of humanoid robotics is to make robots able to interact with people in a believable way. Recent studies have demonstrated that human-like robots with high similarity to human beings do not generate the sense of unease that is typically associated to human-like robots. For this reason designing of aesthetically appealing and socially attractive robots becomes necessary for realistic human-robot interactions. In this paper HEFES (Hybrid Engine for Facial Expressions Synthesis), an engine for generating and controlling facial expressions both on physical androids and 3D avatars is described. HEFES is part of a software library that controls a human robot called FACE (Facial Automaton for Conveying Emotions). HEFES was designed to allow users to create facial expressions without requiring artistic or animatronics skills and it is able to animate both FACE and its 3D replica. The system was tested in human-robot interaction studies aimed to help children with autism to interpret their interlocutors' mood through facial expressions understanding. © 2012 IEEE

A Multimodal Perception Framework for Users Emotional State Assessment in Social Robotics

“…Considering the relevance of physical embodiment and its measurable effect on performance and perception of social interactions [48,49], we decided to integrate all the sensors used by TMP and SA in a physical robotic platform: the higlhy expressive humanoid robot FACE [50,51]. FACE was initially a woman-like robotic head designed and developed by Hanson Robotics (http://www.hansonrobotics.com/), capable to convey emotion by means of the movement of a hyper-realistic facial expression controlled by 32 servomotors (Figure 4).…”

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“…The FACE (Facial Automaton for Conveying Emotions) robot is a humanoid robot endowed with a believable facial display system based on biomimetic engineering principles and equipped with a passive articulated body [27]. The latest prototype of the FACE robot's head has been fabricated by David Hanson (http://www.hansonrobotics.com/) through a life-casting technique.…”

“…ACT: HEFES (Hybrid Engine for Facial Expressions Synthesis) is a software engine deputed to the emotional control of the FACE robot [27]. This service receives an ECS (emotional circumplex space) point (v,a) expressed in terms of valence and arousal according to Russel's theory, called the "circumplex model of affects" [40], and calculates the corresponding facial expression, i.e., a configuration of servo motors, that is sent over the network to the FACE animator.…”