Development of the Face Robot SAYA for Rich Facial Expressions

The purpose of this study is to develop an interactive communication system that communicates with human beings emotionally. Since the face and its expressions are the most important role for natural communication, we have been developing a face robot that can express facial expressions similar to human beings. In this study, we show a new type face robot SAYA. All McKibben pneumatic actuators are distributed to the surface of the face like a human muscle in order to improve the structure of the face robot and facial muscle movement (Action unit) for natural facial expressions. Since the bending manner of coil spring might be similar to human cervical vertebra, we developed the new head motion mechanism by using coil spring for realizing human like head motion. In this paper, we describe the structure of face robot SAYA and the way of constructing new neck mechanism. We have confirmed that SAYA has ability to express fine facial expressions