STATE-OF-THE-ART IN COMPONENT TECHNOLOGY FOR AN ANIMATED FACE ROBOT -ITS COMPONENT TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT FOR INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION WITH HUMANS

We are attempting to introduce a 3D, realistic human-like animated fac e robot to human-robot communication. The face robot can recognize hum an facial expressions as well as produce realistic facial expressions in real time. For the animated face robot to communicate interactively , we propose a new concept of 'active human interface', and we investi gate the performance of real time recognition of facial expressions by neural networks (NN) and the expressionability of facial messages on the face robot. We find that the NN recognition of facial expressions and the face robot's performance in generating facial expressions are of almost same level as that in humans. We also construct an artificia l emotion model able to generate six basic emotions in accordance with the recognition of a given facial expression and the situational cont ext. This implies a high potential for the animated face robot to unde rtake interactive communication with humans, when integrating these th ree component technologies into the face robot.