Robot self-recognition via facial expression sensorimotor learning

Abstract

To develop robots that can show cognitive functions, we must learn from the knowledge of human cognition. Existing biological and psychological evidence suggests that self-face perception and sensorimotor learning mechanisms play a crucial role in self-recognition. However, one of the most important self-identity cues – facial information – has not been extensively studied in the robot self-recognition task. Current research on robot self-recognition primarily relies on the recognition of high-precision targets and tracking of manipulator motions, where the self-perception of facial information is not well studied. In this work, we propose a novel approach to achieve self-recognition via self-perception of facial expressions. Specifically, we developed a Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (CGAN) model using the knowledge on human cognitive and sensorimotor functions. It allows the robot to be aware of self-face (i.e., off-line model). Passing the observed visual variations in a mirror and comparing them to self-perceptive information, the robot can recognize the self through an online Bayesian learning regression. The results of our first experiment show that the robot can recognize itself in a mirror. The results from the second experiment show that our algorithm could be tricked by a similar robot with the same facial expressions, which is similar to the rubber hand illusion (RHI).