A novel robotic neck for realizing an anatomically accurate android head targeting facial perception research

Abstract

we describe a novel robotic neck mechanism that supports realistic human head motion. Our design uses a 3-DOF spherical neck inspired by the 2-DOF spherical wrist of the Orthoglide 5-axis industrial robot. We use a gimbal-like mechanism to combine three 1-DOF motion components to rotate the head about a common point and around the three principal axes. Based on this design, we implemented and compared our neck in an android called Uma using human expressive neck motion specifications to ensure it is capable of human-like motion. Based on our evaluations, the neck has been shown to be suitable for perception experiments that require human-like head motion.