OPTICAL EXPRESSIONS SKIN
OPTICAL EXPRESSIONS FOR ANDROID
OPTICAL EXPRESSIONS ANDROID

Osaka University was founded in 1931 as one of the seven imperial universities of Japan and is now one of Japan's leading comprehensive universities with a broad disciplinary spectrum.

OPTICAL EXPRESSIONS ANDROID

This article, “Objective Evaluation of Mechanical Expressiveness in Android and Human faces” was published in Advanced Robotics at DOI: Future research on this evaluation method may help android developers create robots with increased expressiveness. “This method is expected to aid in the development of androids with expressive power that rivals what humans are capable of,” Ishihara says. In fact, the potential range of motion for the androids was only about 20% that of humans even in the most lenient evaluation. It was discovered that the expressiveness of the androids was significantly less than that of humans, especially in the lower regions of the faces. Displacements of over 100 facial points for each subject were measured using an optical motion capture system.

OPTICAL EXPRESSIONS SKIN

While previous evaluation methods focused only on specific coordinated facial movements, the new method employs the spatial range over which each skin part can move for the numerical indicator of “expressiveness.” That is, instead of counting on the number of facial patterns that can be created by the mechanical actuators that control the movements or evaluating the quality of these patterns, the new index looked at the total spatial range of motion accessible by every point on the face.įor this study, two androids-one representing a child and one representing an adult female-were analyzed, along with three human adult males. “The goal is to understand how expressive an android face can be compared to humans,” author Hisashi Ishihara says. Although facial expressions are important for transmitting information during social interactions, the degree to which mechanical actuators can reproduce human emotions can vary greatly. Now, a new evaluation method was proposed at Osaka University to precisely measure the mechanical performance of android robot faces. It would be especially useful if the index could be applied equally to both humans and androids. However, one obstacle to this is the lack of standard methodology for measuring the expressiveness of android faces. As much as it might sound like science fiction, this situation may not be so far in the future. But, to your surprise, an android is manning the desk.

Imagine on your next trip to the mall, you head to the information desk to ask for directions to a new store.

This work may help develop more lifelike robots that can rapidly convey information.

By focusing on the range of deformation of the face instead of the number of mechanical actuators, the new system can more accurately measure how much robots are able to mimic actual human emotions. Osaka, Japan – A scientist from the Graduate School of Engineering at Osaka University proposed a numerical scale to quantify the expressiveness of robotic android faces.

OPTICAL EXPRESSIONS FOR ANDROID

Image: Difference of conventional and the proposed evaluation methods for android faces view more

Optical expressions