Articulated Humanoid Head for a Robot Receptionist Capable of Natural Human Interaction
RoboticsComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Summary
The authors created a robot head that looks and moves like a human's to help with receptionist tasks. It has many moving parts to make facial expressions and uses software to recognize faces and understand speech in real-time. They tested how well it talks and remembers people, and also checked if people thought it looked and acted human-like, getting a good score. Their design aims to be more adaptable and less complex than existing robot heads.
Authors
Tharusha Fonseka, Charuka Bandara, Moshintha Hewavitharana, Melisa Arukgoda, Wageesha N. Manamperi, Udaya S. K. Perera Miriya Thanthrige, Peshala Jayasekara
Abstract
Humanoid robots have become increasingly popular in applications such as social interaction, education, and service roles, which drives the need for more natural and efficient human-robot interactions. However, currently available humanoid heads often face limitations, including high costs, mechanical complexity, and limited adaptability across diverse environments. To address these challenges, we present an articulated humanoid robot head designed for a receptionist role, integrating a mechanical structure with 21 degrees of freedom (DoF), including mechanisms for the mouth, eyes, eyebrows, and neck, and covered with realistic silicone skin to achieve a human-like appearance and expression. The system integrates a model-based architecture that combines SCRFD, ArcFace, and ByTetrack for face recognition and Llama and Whisper for natural language processing, with hardware support enabling real-time operations and human re-identification. The conversational ability and re-identification capabilities of the humanoid robot head were quantitatively measured, while its emotional expressiveness and human likeness were evaluated through a user study, achieving an average human likeness score of 4.13 out of 5.