Despite the summer vacation, Professor Liu Xiaofeng and his team at Hohai University in Jiangsu Province have been hard at work in their lab, developing humanoid robots that can display highly expressive facial features.
Focusing on enhancing human-robot emotional interactions, the team has created a novel algorithm that enables robots to generate lifelike facial expressions. This breakthrough was recognized by the China Association of Science and Technology, which listed emotionally intelligent digital humans and robots among the top ten cutting-edge scientific issues for 2024.
On July 2, Liu's team published their findings on a new approach called action unit (AU)-driven facial expression disentangled synthesis in the international journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
Humanoid robots have traditionally struggled to mimic the complex and authentic facial expressions of humans, making it difficult to engage users effectively, Liu explained. \"To overcome this, we introduced a comprehensive two-stage methodology that allows our autonomous affective robot to exhibit rich and natural facial expressions,\" he said.
The first stage involves generating nuanced facial expression images guided by AUs. In the second stage, these expressions are brought to life through a robot with multiple degrees of freedom in facial movements, enabling smooth and detailed transitions.
Co-author Ni Rongrong from Changzhou University noted that while digital humans and virtual anchors can produce various real-time expressions, humanoid robots face unique challenges, such as limited motor sizes and quantities. For instance, their previous robot had only nine micro motors beneath its facial surface, far fewer than the number of muscles in a human face.
To address this, the team mapped the nine motors to 17 AUs, allowing for more complex expressions and smoother transitions through coordinated movements. Liu added that the researchers plan to expand the number of facial AUs, aiming to equip robots with even more delicate and autonomous expressions.
With advancing emotional interaction capabilities, these humanoid robots are expected to find widespread use in settings like nursing homes, kindergartens, and special education schools, providing both assistance and emotional value, Liu concluded.
Reference(s):
China develops humanoid robots with realistic facial expression
cgtn.com
