Design of a robot head for emotional expression: EEEX

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a new robot head which has three special parts for emotional expression. The emotion of robots has become an issue of interest in the field of robotics. This robot head, EEEX(exaggerating emotion expresser) is developed to efficiently express various emotions. EEEX is useful in the human-robot interaction. EEEX has 3 special elements that humans do not possess to clearly express emotions. The first is arm-type antennae which consist of a 3-DOFs link system on each side to make dynamically emotional movements. They are specialized parts to show emotion by copying the humanpsilas arm motion. Second, emoticon-eyes help to represent emotions intuitively since the eyes are the most important parts to convey emotions. Lastly, exaggerating jaw & cheeks when expressing exaggerative emotions should assist in emotional expression as well, particularly surprise and anger. These 3 parts, the arm-type antennae, emoticon-eyes and exaggerating jaw & cheeks, would help human to recognize a robotpsilas emotions more clearly.