Designing of android head system by applying facial muscle mechanism of humans

Abstract

The facial system plays an important role in human-robot interaction. EveR-4 H33 is a head system for an android face controlled by thirty-three motors. It consists of three layers: a mechanical layer, an inner cover layer and an outer cover layer. Motors are attached under the skin and some motors are correlated with each other. Some expressions cannot be shown by moving just one motor. In addition, moving just one motor can cause damage to other motors or the skin. To solve these problems, a facial muscle control method that controls motors in a correlated manner is required. We designed a facial muscle control method and applied it to EveR-4 H33. We develop the actress robot EveR-4A by applying the EveR-4 H33 to the 24 degrees of freedom upper body and mannequin legs. EveR-4A shows various facial expressions with lip synchronization using our facial muscle control method.